British and French troops looted the Summer Palace in 1860; Yves Saint Laurent's estate auctioned two of its bronze heads, and the winning bidder refused to pay

Twelve bronze animal heads of the Chinese zodiac spouted water from a fountain in the European section of the Yuanmingyuan, the Qing emperors' garden palace outside Beijing. The Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione designed them. In September 1860 Qing officials seized about a dozen British and allied envoys and soldiers and tortured them; several died, including The Times correspondent Thomas Bowlby. British and French troops looted the palace. On 18 October 1860 Lord Elgin had British troops set it on fire, and it burned for two days. The heads scattered. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé owned the rat and the rabbit. After Saint Laurent died, Christie's Paris sold their collection, and on 25 February 2009 an anonymous bidder took both heads for 31.4 million euros. A Chinese association had sued in Paris to stop the sale and lost. Bergé said he would return them if China gave human rights to Tibet and welcomed the Dalai Lama. The winning bidder, Cai Mingchao, an adviser to China's National Treasures Fund, then announced he would not pay. Bergé kept the heads. The Pinault family bought them and donated them to China on 28 June 2013; they are in the National Museum of China. Stanley Ho bought the horse head in 2007 and gave it to the state in 2019. On 1 December 2020 it became the first head returned to the palace grounds. Seven heads are in China. The dragon, snake, sheep, rooster and dog were unlocated in 2011.