During the boxer rebellion, Chinese boxers had been humiliating foreigners inside the Peking cities. Sometimes, they graped any innocent foreign citizens on the street to kill them. These foreigners were not soldiers or armed, so that very often, they had no idea how to fight back. In a famous movie called 55 Days in Peking, it was showed at the begginning of the movie that an innocent foreigner was tortured to death by bring rolled in the windmill. Inside the picture, many Chinese citizens were applausing for the death of a human being. When these accidents happened, the Chinese Empress at the beginning turned a blind eye to it because she somehow believed that it might help the government cast out the intruders. In fact, the boxers’ intentions were good. They solely wanted to defend their own coutry. It is a basic belief that every citizen from any coutry can have. However, as time went by, their actions were getting more extreme and more violent. Sometimes the Chinese boxers destroyed any foreign churches they set their eyes on althought they know there are people inside. One time they had designed a very big machine that shoots the fire into a church. Many helpless foreign citizens can only hide behind the war, waiting for the medical aides to be carried inside. This event has always been depicted as a heroic chapter among many Chinese offical documents. However, from the international point of view, it is often written as a violent and irrational attack that ignorant Chinese defenders initiated.
During the time, there was many huge conlicts not only between the boxers and the foreign citizens, but also the the conflict between the Chinese government and the Boxers. Even inside the Qing Dynasty Imperial Court, there was intense conflicting attitudes among the officials. During the YiHeTuan movemtn, in Peking, the Empress Dowager had summoned the Court for a lot of audience and decided to discuss the choices about whether it is right to use the Boxers to “evict the foreigners from the city” or whether it is more sensible to “seek a diplomatic solution.” In the meeting, a high official had made it clear that he did not believe that the Boxers' are able to evict the foreign force. In response to this, the Empress Dowager Cixi replied: “Perhaps their magic is not to be relied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?” (Joseph Esherick, 45)
Two opposing factions were active during this movement. On one side were anti-foreigners. As a result, they firmly supported the actions of the boxers since they literally viewed foreigners as invasive and imperialistic. For this group of people, they had been gladly advocating to take advantage of the Boxers because they hope it might help them to achieve the expulsion of foreign troops and foreign culture. On the contrary, many other Chinese officials were not supporting the cause of the boxers because they regarded the Chinese boxers as superstitious and ignorant. These two fractions had only been sitting around to debate for the boxers. (Joseph Esherick, 34) However, they had actually done nothing to support their actions. The best that the Empress Dowager Cixi could do was only to keep quiet about the event.
In fact, there are many s that described in detail about what really happened. There are records about heros in the Yi He Tuan Movement. There is an unsung hero called Danial Joesph Daly. He was the Sergeant Major and he was one of the only nineteen men who have actually received the Medal of Honor twice. Another Major General named Butler has once described Daly as, "The fightin'est Marine I ever knew!"
Daly was part of the U.S. Embassy Guard in Peking when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. During one of the wars that took place during the boxer rebellion, the Boxers had “surrounded the compound of the foreign legations in Peking and laid siege to the place for 55 days.” At one time, when German Marines were forced to retrieve back, Daly solely by himself took a position in a bastion on the Tarter Wall and he remained awake there to defend his friends throughout the night. Even though he was under the risk of being shot by sniper fire and other attacks, Private Daly was still holding his position with for a long time, keeping his people from being killed by the boxers. These heroic s about Daly could only be found in books published in English because from the Chinese officials’ point of view, the boxers were the brave defenders but the foreign generals were the violent and cruel intruders.
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