The Old Summer Palace is known as the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens. Why is it now in ruins? Why is the once glorious Old Summer Palace now only a ruin? As we all know, the first large-scale destruction of the Old Summer Palace was in 1960, when it was burned by the British and French forces. But after burning, many buildings were still intact. In 1870, a German took 12 photos of the Western-style Building Scenic Area, showing that "although it was severely damaged, it is still beautiful and moving." When Kang Youwei visited the Old Summer Palace in 1895, he saw that "Although it is covered with vines and broken gravel and is desolate, there are still countless pavilions and halls in Fushan and Shouhai, and there are white-headed officials guarding them, but you can only visit a corner of them."

Later, when the foreigners withdrew, the eunuchs and soldiers in charge of the garden launched an endless "guerrilla war" with thieves that lasted for 40 years. Valuable items were gradually stolen, and people placed their hopes on the tiny treasures scattered and buried in the soil. There is a proverb from time to time, "Sifting the soil, sifting the soil, and you will live a lifetime without suffering." However, these thefts basically did not damage the buildings. And the general appearance of Linquan Mountain and Stone is still preserved. The precious flowers and trees in the garden are still there, the rockery gardens are still there, the mountain-shaped water system is still there, and the garden walls are still there. It is still a forbidden royal garden.

But in 1900, the Old Summer Palace suffered from war again. That year, the Eight-Power Allied Forces entered Beijing, and the Qing government lost control of the Old Summer Palace. The looters sawed off the pillars of the buildings and wooden bridges in the garden, pulled them down with big ropes, and cut down all the trees in the garden. Large materials are used as wood, and small materials are burned into charcoal. At that time, timber piled up like mountains in Qinghe Town, and there were many carbon factories in the park. After this calamity, the Old Summer Palace has lost all its ancient trees and miscellaneous trees, but there are still mountains, rocks, lakes and springs, as well as Dashuifa, Yuanying Temple, and Western-style buildings.

In 1911, the Revolution of 1911 broke out. But it did not bring good luck to the Old Summer Palace. In the early years of the Republic of China, the warlords who changed like a revolving lantern all used the Old Summer Palace as an inexhaustible supply of building materials. Everything in the Old Summer Palace that could be used as building materials was collected. Hundreds of dollars were collected every day. The car was pulled out, and it was pulled on and off for more than 20 years! In 1929, Zhang Xueliang built a cemetery for his father, and many of the stones used came from the Old Summer Palace. After this calamity, the remaining buildings such as Dashuifa, Yuanying Temple, and Western Building were all reduced to a passing smoke. In 1940, during the Japanese occupation, Beijing was short of food, so it encouraged land reclamation. Farmers gradually moved into the garden to fill the mountains and lakes, and opened fields to grow rice. The beauty of the lakes and mountains of the Old Summer Palace was lost.