It was the summer of 1880. In China's rugged north-west, Russian soldiers were skirmishing with Chinese forces. In the seas to the east, the tsar's navy was approaching Chinese waters. Thousands of Chinese troops were dispatched to Tianjin, near the capital, Beijing, where an army was mobilising for a war the Qing empire did not wish to fight. Considering that China and Russia had just negotiated a treaty, things were not going terribly well.
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