Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing in 1900, and the Qing government once again lost control of Yuanmingyuan. All the trees in the park have been cut down, and the pillars and wooden bridges of buildings have been sawed off. The surviving buildings that escaped the looting of the British and French allied forces were demolished, but the yamagata water system survived.

After the abdication of the Qing emperor, the warlords in Beijing used Yuanmingyuan as a building material field, and almost all the things that could be used as building materials were searched out. Later, when Zhang Xueliang, who was in charge in Beijing, built a cemetery for his father, he ordered people to remove many stones from it. After the robbery, some of the remaining buildings were gone.

During the Republic of China, the landscape system of Yuanmingyuan, which has survived, was robbed by the soil. Farmers used to live in Yuanmingyuan. In order to develop production and build houses, they dig mountains and borrow soil. In the early 1980s, there were more than 2,000 families living in Yuanmingyuan, with cultivated land, factories and shooting ranges. At this point, the entire yamagata water system was destroyed.

Extended data:

Known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", Yuanmingyuan was "robbed by fire" by the British and French allied forces in 1860, which was only the beginning of the disaster. At that time, precious cultural relics were robbed and most buildings were burned, but the mountain-shaped water system was not damaged, and many underwater landscapes such as Fanghu Shengjing and Pengdao Yaotai were quite complete.

After years of hard work, the state has recovered all the land use rights within the original Yuanming Third Park, and all the residents and most units who settled in the park have moved out. In 2000, the master plan of Yuanmingyuan was officially approved by National Cultural Heritage Administration.

Reference: People's Network-Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens: An intriguing disaster history of Yuanmingyuan.