The 27-Ton Chinese Marble Mystery: Who Laughs at Harvard's Stolen Stone?

Since 1820, the Harvard Bixi, a giant 17-foot tall marble stele, has stood on a corner at Boylston Hall and Widener Library in Harvard Yard. But the puzzling question arises: why did this 27-ton stone not grace Cambridge during the China-Harvard friendship's zenith in 1860, but instead during the Tercentenary celebration of 1936? The stone's history whispers a link to the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, yet the treasure was supposedly lost during the Second Opium War in 1860.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons