When a man from Peißenberg fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China. Mathias Mayr was 22 years old when he decided to go to China.
He was to spend eight months in the Far East, witnessing a European colonial war and leading bloody battles against the Chinese rural population. The China of 1900 can hardly be compared with the China of today. The central government in Beijing had only weak control over the many provinces of the empire, and the technological gap between the ancient Chinese civilization and the West had increased dramatically.