To paraphrase a couple of Avengers: You and I remember Beijing very differently. Around 1900, a group of kung fu practitioners in China who came to be known as "the Boxers" began assaulting just about any foreigners they could find. In response, an alliance of eight countries send expeditionary armies to China, where they in turn killed a good many and destroyed a great deal. Today, the event is painfully remembered in China but all but forgotten internationally. It's not even known by the same name in the Chinese-speaking world and outside of it. Yet you cannot understand modern China without knowing about it. And it is no coincidence that the membership of the alliance of the Eight Nations in 1900 is almost identical to the G7 in 2021...
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