The trees in the neighbourhood of villages and in graveyards are common property, and it is very rarely, therefore, that they are cut down: elsewhere trees are very few, and timber is so scarce that large quantities are imported yearly from Manchuria.[107] Some of the principal trees of the Territory are the fir (Pinus Thunbergii and Pinus Massoniana), ailanthus, wu-t'ung (Paulonia imperialis) and white poplar; and there are also cypress, walnut, ch'iu (Catalpa), pomegranate, wax-tree,[108] the beautiful maidenhair tree (Salisbaria adiantifolia)[109] and the huai shu (Sophora japonica).
Among the trees introduced since the British occupation, the acacia, Lombardy poplar, laburnum, yew and some others thrive in the Territory, but the oak, sycamore, elm, birch, mountain-ash and many other trees well known in England have hitherto proved failures. From the present denuded condition of the hills one would hardly suppose that the people of Weihaiwei cared much for trees: yet as a matter of fact they value them highly for their shade and for their beauty. Public opinion is strongly averse to the wanton destruction of all trees and herbage. An illustration of this is given in the local records. "It is a very evil thing," says the Weihaiwei Chih, "to set fire to the woods and shrubs, and pitifully cruel to the living animals that are made to suffer thereby. In the Shun Chih period [about 1650] Chiang Ping and his sons used to behave in this dreadful manner at Li Shan The compilers of the Jung-ch'êng Chih sum up the character and manners of the people in a way that hardly needs amplification and shows what are the features that strike a Chinese observer as of special interest. "They are very simple and somewhat uncouth and unpolished," he says, "but they are honest. They have some good old customs and show by their conduct that they are guided by the light of nature more than by learning. The men are independent and self-reliant; the women are frugal, modest, and are most careful of their chastity. If they lose that they hold life as worthless. The men till the land; the women spin. The people are stupid at business of a mercantile nature: merchants therefore are few. Many strangers from other districts live on the islands and in the market-centres.[110] In bad years when the harvests are scanty and there is a dearth of grain the hill-grasses and wild herbs are used as food. Clansmen, relatives, and neighbours take pity on each other's distress, hence one rarely hears of the sale of boys and girls.[111] ... Betrothals are arranged when the principals are still in their swaddling-clothes, and thus (owing to deaths and other causes) marriages often fail to take place. Babyhood is certainly too early a time for betrothals.[112] There are too many betrothals between people of different districts: hence one may find women over thirty years of age still unmarried.[113] This tends to the grave injury of morals. When betrothals are discussed it is considered by all disgraceful to hold mercenary views[114] or to aim at riches and honours. It is also considered discreditable to give a girl to a man as a concubine."[115] The "uncouthness" of the people must be understood in a relative sense only. In spite of the fact that the great majority are illiterate they possess in a marked degree the natural courtesy that characterises so many Oriental races. In considering this point with reference to Chinese in general one must not ignore the fact that they have been often guilty of rudeness and even savage brutality in their intercourse with Western foreigners; but to regard rudeness and brutality as permanent or prominent elements in the Chinese character would be absurd, for if such were the case every Chinese village would be in a chronic state of social chaos. Outbursts against foreigners, however inexcusable from a moral standpoint, are always traceable to some misunderstanding, to foreign acts of aggression or acts which the Chinese rightly or wrongly interpret as acts of aggression, or to abnormal political or social conditions for which foreigners are rightly or wrongly held responsible. Most unprejudiced foreigners are willing to admit that in normal times the Chinese are a singularly courteous people, except when they have taken on a veneer of Western civilisation in the treaty-ports[116] and have lost their national graces. If the Chinese behave politely to foreigners—whom they do not like—we may well suppose that in social intercourse with one another their manners are still more courteous: and this is undoubtedly true. Their rules of ceremony may seem, from the foreigner's point of view, too stiff and artificial, or exasperating in their pedantic minuteness. The European is inclined to laugh at social laws which indicate with preciseness when and how a mourner should wail at a funeral, what expressions a man must use when paying visits of condolence or congratulation, what clothes must be worn on different occasions, how a visitor must be greeted, how farewells are to be said, how modes of salutation are to be differentiated and how chairs are to be sat upon. But, after all, every race has its own code of polite manners, and rules that impress a foreigner as intolerably formal or as ludicrous seem quite natural to one who has been accustomed to them from his earliest childhood. The rules of Chinese etiquette may be stiff, but there is no stiffness about the Chinese gentleman—or about the illiterate Chinese peasant—when he is acting in accordance with those rules. Gambling has been mentioned as one of the vices of the people. That this should be a common failing among the Chinese is not a matter of surprise, seeing that there is probably no race among whom the gambling instinct is not to be found. It is, perhaps, specially likely to develop itself strongly among a people who, through lack of general culture, are at a loss to find suitable occupations for their leisure hours. The Chinese, however, delight in games for their own sake, as is evident from their fondness for their own somewhat complicated forms of chess and similar games. Serious cases of gambling are of course punished by the law. A new penal offence is opium-smoking, which now can be indulged in only by persons who hold a medical certificate. According to the official lists prepared by the local Government, the number of people who may be regarded as inveterate smokers amounts to no more than (if as many as) one per cent. of the population: but there is a certain amount of secret smoking and doubtless a good deal of smuggling. On the whole, it cannot be said that opium seems to have done any very serious harm to the health or morals of the people of this district,—not, at least, as compared with the havoc wrought by alcohol in England and Scotland. If the experience of Weihaiwei goes for anything, the view sometimes held that opium-smokers must necessarily become slaves to the drug is an erroneous one. Many persons who were in the habit of indulging in an occasional pipe of opium at festive gatherings have now abjured the seductive drug without a sigh, and—judging from a few rather ominous indications—seem inclined to take to the wine-pot as a substitute. It may be only a curious coincidence that while I have been obliged to punish only six Chinese for drunkenness during a period of about five years, all six cases have occurred since the establishment of the new anti-opium regulations in 1909.