The reason for burning Yuanmingyuan was to force the Qing government to accept the terms of peace as soon as possible. The British army leader Erkin and the British nominal commander Grant used the excuse that the Qing government had imprisoned British and French prisoners in Yuanmingyuan, that is, the Second Opium War. Burning Yuanmingyuan in a narrow sense refers to burning Yuanmingyuan. In a broad sense, the scope of burning is not just one Yuanmingyuan, but the royal three mountains and five gardens in the west of Beijing. The scope and degree of burning are much larger than that of Yuanmingyuan, and the number of looted cultural relics in Yuanmingyuan is roughly1500,000.

Yuanmingyuan is a large-scale imperial garden in China in the Qing Dynasty. It is located in Haidian District, Beijing. It was built in 1707 (forty-six years of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty). It consists of Yuanmingyuan and its attached gardens, Changchun Garden and Qichun Garden (later renamed Wanchun Garden). It is also called Yuanming Three Gardens, and is known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens". The Qing emperor came here every summer to escape the heat and listen to politics, so Yuanmingyuan is also called "Summer Palace". 1860 During the Second Opium War, Yuanmingyuan was looted and burned by the British and French allied forces, so the site is now Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park.