When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, Cixi had already fled west with the Guangxu Emperor, and the entire Forbidden City fell into the hands of the great powers, when the Japanese had taken photos of the Forbidden City after Cixi's escape, at this time the Forbidden City had no longer the majesty and grandeur of the past, it looked like people were extremely sad, China's modern history was full of suffering and humiliation, and the Qing Dynasty as the last feudal dynasty, the late rulers were very faint and incompetent.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it began to implement a closed-door policy, so it missed the industrial revolution and gradually began to lag behind the Western countries, and the actual ruler of the qing dynasty in the last years was Empress Dowager Cixi, the emperor was just a puppet in her hands, she would only blindly cut off the land in the face of the aggression of the great powers, signed a lot of treaties that humiliated the country, until the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance, Empress Dowager Cixi fled with the emperor abandoning the city.
At that time, the army of the Eight-Nation Alliance had already hit the Forbidden City, the soldiers entered the palace at will to see that the valuable belongings were looted, there was a Japanese architect named Ito Tadao, he liked Chinese traditional culture very much, especially Chinese architecture, he has always believed that Japan's history and culture are derived from China, so he came to the Forbidden City at this time.
Ito Tadano used the camera to record the Forbidden City in his eyes, when Cixi had been fleeing for a long time, so the whole palace was not cleaned, the grass was overgrown, it looked extremely defeated and desolate, and this once prosperous royal palace was extremely desolate in the photo, which made people sigh. Now the Forbidden City has been restored to become the Palace Museum, and ordinary people can also buy tickets to enter and visit, and the changes in history are really vicissitudes.