I find it fascinating that Chinese polity up till today, peddles this sacrilege “lost of face” over the French and English troops successively burning of the last dynasty’s Summer Palaces. “It’s an affront to our nation,” they cry, citing the looted treasures of empire in the British Museum and the Guiment.

In the crumbling gardens today, one of few things that remain is this stone ship commissioned by Empress CiXi.

Aside from the aesthetics of beautiful Venetian glass and Italian marble, it defies any logic. Set in an artificial lake, it’s not going left, not going right. In many ways, a perverse reminder of a nation at the time, loosing its mind stuck in its own ways, unable to steer forward even if it tried.