A theatrical company may be engaged by any person or group of persons willing to pay the required expenses. A theatrical entertainment is not therefore necessarily connected with religion, though in Weihaiwei it is generally so--at least in name. Occasionally a villager who has acquired wealth in Manchuria or elsewhere makes a bid for local popularity by paying the whole expenses out of his own pocket; but as a rule the cost is met out of the common purse. This leads us to a consideration of the internal polity and fiscal arrangements of a Weihaiwei village, which must be clearly understood in their main outlines if we are to arrive at any adequate conception of the manner in which the peasants of this district, as of nearly the whole of China, regulate their lives and allocate their rights and responsibilities. Certainly the main interest of the Territory, especially for those interested in sociological questions, lies in the quiet and apparently humdrum life of the village communities. As that life is now, so it has been for unnumbered centuries. There is no manorial system, no "villeinage," no landlordism, no rack-renting. The people of Weihaiwei are practically a population of peasant proprietors, though proprietorship is vested rather in the family (using the word in an extended sense) than in the individual. Villages still bear, in very many cases, the name of the family that lived in them as far back as their history can be traced. Chang-chia-shan is the Hill of the Chang family; Wang-chia-k'uang is the Defile of the Wang family; Chiang-chia-k'ou is the Pass of the Chiang family; Yü-chia-chuang is the village of the Yü family. There is an old story of a weary traveller in Scotland who, having arrived at a certain country town in the Border district late at night, and finding closed doors everywhere, called out, "Are there no Christians in this town?"--whereat an old woman popped her head out of an upper window and replied, "Nae, nae, we're a' Johnstones and Jardines here." The Scottish town at least had its two surnames; more often than not a Weihaiwei village has only one. There may be Chinese Johnstones or Chinese Jardines; but it is improbable that they will be found together in the same village in such an old-fashioned district as Weihaiwei. This is not, of course, universally the case. When a clan is starved out of existence or has emigrated in a body, or, owing to its paucity of numbers, has admitted immigrants, the village may gradually become the property of several unrelated families. It is then known as a _tsa hsing_ village, or village of miscellaneous surnames. Its old name may or may not be perpetuated. Mêng-chia-chuang, which ought to be the village of the Mêng family, is now the property of a well-to-do family or clan named Liang, and the Mêngs have disappeared.