One of the attaches of the mission sent by the French government to China, after the termination of the war, to negotiate a treaty of commerce, published an account of the voyage, from which we give the following description: --
       "The attaches of the mission were very much astonished one morning to find the appearance of the two principal streets of Canton completely changed.  Before each house was set a kind of stand or altar, of considerable size; upon the different steps of these stands were placed figures in porcelain and cardboard; by the side of these they remarked vases planted with fruit trees, scarcely a foot in height, the branches of which, twisted and distorted, bent under the weight of their fruit, which was of their natural size.
       "The figures of cardboard and porcelain, the most eccentric the brain of a Chinaman could invent, were in continual movement. -- Here, a Mandarin, of the first class, rolled his haggard eyes, and gesticulated his arms; there a soldier sabred nothing right and left; farther on a Chinese lady raised tenderly her languishing eyes, and fanned a large headed man, who each moment hung out an immense tongue.  Time after time the fantastic images stopped as if fatigued with their exercise, but then the proprietors of the stands gave some strokes with a whip, and immediately the pantomime recommenced with renewed activity.  There was enough in this to astonish the curious spirit of the French travellers.  What caused these images to march to the tune of the whip?  And these little trees so contemptible in appearance -- the height of a foot ! -- carrying, each orange tree, twenty enormous oranges?  And each apple tree twenty or thirty large apples?  For the images the explanation was not difficult to find.  The Chinese had introduced into the interior of them one or two mice, which, on being stirred, struck some wires, and thus communicated the movement to the limbs expressly jointed to produce this effect.  When the mice slept, the cut of a whip aroused and afflighted them, and so re-doubled the vivacity of the gestures of the images.  As for the dwarf trees, there was in that a mystery of horticulture, or rather sylvi-culture, to divine.  M. Renard had noticed, on visiting the apartments of the Mandarins, similar little trees of the height of some few inches, pitiful to look at, unhealthy, distorted, and covered with excoriations without number, and a thing which astonished him -- the little foliage which ornamented the extremity of the branches, belonged to kinds that ordinarily attain an enormous size, such as the elm, the bamboo, and the cypress.  M R. arrived at the following solution of these eccentricities:  That for the Chinese nothing is beautiful but what is hideous; that a stunted shrub without leaves is a wonder that is worth all the forests in the universe; and so the principal occupation of the Chinese nurserymen is to combat nature in every thing that is beautiful and rich."
       An account of the training of dwarf trees by the Chinese cultivators follows, from which it appears they are at great pains to produce these monstrosities.  The trees stunted by their processes sell at a high price; and, what is surprising attain to extreme longevity, -- some of them being one hundred and even two hundred years of age.  Several specimens of dwarf trees were sent to the Queen from China. [sic]   1 

1    Scientific American, Vol. 2, Issue 19, January 30, 1847, pg. 152.

cf. “Chinese Method of Dwarf ing Trees,” published by an author signing only with the initials “W.I.,” in the Gardener’s Chronicle of 21 November 1846.  Alluding to “the late Chinese war,” the author states that his unpaginated account is based on one given by a member of the French commercial expedition sent out to conclude a trade agreement of the kind which the war was designed to make possible.  After a typical Francophobe jibe at the expedition’s relative lack of success, he goes on to describe the scene in the city of Canton on a festival day, where miniature trees formed part of the street decoration.  These are characterized immediately as “twisted and distorted . . . these little trees, so contemptible in appearance . . . pitiful to look at, unhealthy, distorted, and covered with excoriations without number.”  The conclusion is drawn: "That for the Chinese nothing is beautiful but that which is hideous; that a stunted shrub without leaves is a wonder that is worth all the forests of the universe; and so the principal occupation of the Chinese nurseryman is to combat Nature in everything that is beautiful or rich. . . .  It is not only in this case to get ready a branch, but it is a struggle they undertake with Nature, which consists in making hideous that which Nature has created beautiful, to lame and deform that which she has made straight and well looking, to render mean and unhealthy that which she has created vigorous and robust."
       The entire account is structured around a metaphor of torture, as the stages of progressively forcing and stunting the tree are constructed in terms of a fiendishly cruel Chinese gardener who alternately torments and revives the unfortunate plant.  The natural cruelty of the Chinese is thus revealed in their attitude to nature.  Here “nature” means plants. 
       Per Craig Clunas in "Nature and Ideology in Western Descriptions of the Chinese Garden," pp. 25-26, the latter page also including the comment in footnote 17 that "The continued capitalization [by W.I.] of  [the term] 'Nature,' in a manner which was becoming reserved in English orthography at this period for the name of the Deity, is noteworthy."