Wake Insects, Feed Tiger, Beat Little People With Shoes
Hong Kong's Underground Holiday
Yesterday I ran out of printer ink and went down to a shop on Wellington Street to buy a cartridge. It was a busy lunch hour, and I really enjoy that corner of downtown, where rents are still hanging on and the printing shop owners are working away on ancient metal presses in clanky open storefronts. I meandered up the hill and turned left on Hollywood Road, by the Man Mo Temple. Then, further on, across the street, I spotted something unusual: about 20 ladies were squatting on the sidewalk, lighting candles and incense sticks, laying out cute little paper tigers with a strip of pork fat on their heads, and burning fistfuls of paper in metal cans.
Burning paper in canisters on the street isn't a big deal in Hong Kong. People do it all the time. The little red metal canisters are such a standard household item you can buy them in hardware stores. People habitually burn offerings to ancestors, or to meddlesome spirits. But they don't usually do this in large groups stationed along the sidewalk. And what's with those paper tigers? I went over and asked one of the old ladies if this was a special occasion. She smiled, and said something in Cantonese but the only words I could make out were baai san--pray.
I walked home, trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of this. At the door to my building, the solution appeared in the form of a middle aged lady with a pixie haircut and a blue uniform: Mrs. Wong. Mrs. Wong's official title is "gung leih yuen", in other words, she's my building's security person and doorlady. What that really means is that she's the Empress of our little kingdom here at Profitable View Court. Mrs. Wong knows everybody and everything.
Including what the ladies on Hollywood Road are up to. "Today is Ging Jat," she says, pulling me over to the enormous Chinese calendar that's by her desk and pointing to today, March 6th, a date which has two red Chinese characters on it:
驚 蟄 ging jat. It means, literally, "awakening/hibernation"
Mrs. Wong knows I can speak Cantonese, but she usually embellishes her talks to me with lots of pantomine anyway, just to make sure I get her point. I ask her what "Ging Jat" is, and for a moment she's lost for words. Then she makes a creepy-crawly motion with her ten fingers. "Today the bugs wake up! And you have to hit them! And then the ladies will take their shoes and hit the small people. You should go down to Canal Road in Wan Chai after 6 o' clock, because there will be lots and lots of people beating the shoes. It's part of Hong Kong's history."
I know a little about this. For a long time I've been fascinated by the elderly ladies who set up shop under the overpass on Canal Road. You pay them a few dollars, and they will vigorously slam a shoe into a picture of your enemy while cursing them. It's called "da siu yahn", or "beat the petty little people". When Tung Chee Hwa was Hong Kong's Chief Executive, these ladies did a huge business with disgruntled HK citizens.
But what do the shoe beaters have to do with paper tigers and the insects waking from hibernation?
A little Internet research turns up an enlightening academic article by a Chinese University anthropologist. It seems that Hong Kong people, over the years, have created a pragmatic stew of rituals that all happen simultaneously on the early spring day that Chinese call the "Waking of the Insects."
"Waking Insects" is a sort of Groundhog Day for rural Chinese. If there is thunder on this day, then the insects will wake up, and the rain will come and harvests will be good. If not, tough times ahead.
There aren't a lot of fields left to plow in Hong Kong, so over the decades, Chinese Insect Day has taken on some additional trappings and symbolism. It has also become the day when you feed the tiger (with pork fat--hey, he's a tiger who likes Hong Kong food). And it is considered to be the best day of the year to beat effigies of "petty people" with shoes.
At around 6, I grab the trolley and head to Wan Chai. When I get to the underpass, there are hundreds of people there. The clip-clop of shoes being hammered against benches and bricks sounds like the thunder of a thousand hoofbeats. I make a little video and take a few snapshots.
It's really a scene. There's smoke everywhere, from all the incense and papers burning. A few of the shoe-beating ladies must be especially skilled, for they have a long queue of people lined up and waiting. There are lots of photo hounds with cameras, and I spot some reporters from the Chinese press running around with their notebooks, interviewing people. I'm lost in the swirl, transfixed as one client after another goes through the drill of lighting incense, selecting a piece of paper with a drawing of a man or woman on it, then watching grim-faced and silent as the old woman pulverizes the effigy to shreds with sharp, repeated blows.
My reverie is broken by two eager girls from Carmel Pak U Secondary School in the New Territories. They are making a survey for their school project entitled: A Peaceful Violence--The Ritual of Beating the Petty Person in Hong Kong--would I help them?
I take a look at their list of questions. Do I think that 'Beating the Petty Person' can reflect the Hong Kong culture, and why? Do I think it is good to preserve or even to promote this ritual to the locals or tourists, and why?
Funny you should ask. For I've been wondering all day why this popular and compelling Hong Kong holiday, which draws a huge crowd, is so under the radar. Hong Kong's tourism board, which promotes every major and minor Chinese festival from Mooncake Day to Lantern Lighting, somehow left this one off their list.
I'm about to say something to the girls, when one of the shoe-beater's clients, a guy in his forties, suddenly stands up and starts yelling and waving his hands. His temper tantrum breaks the intense mood and disturbs the workmanlike, determined rhythms of the heels going clop! clop! clop! The schoolgirls look embarrassed, and say maybe he's angry cause the lady didn't beat the shoe long enough for him. (Today the service is twice the usual price--$50 HKD a session, about $7.50 US.)
Anyway, the man eventually gets over his Bus Uncle moment, and the clients return to the serious business of changing their luck and symbolically smashing their enemies to a pulp.
I wander around, and start to take another picture of a shoe-beater and her client. But then the client, a young woman about 30, does something that has never happened to me before in Hong Kong: she puts her hand over the lens of my camera. As I apologize, and back away, it occurs to me that if I were in the process of arranging for my errant husband, or my hated sister, or my rival in love to be ritually beaten by proxy, I wouldn't want someone recording it for posterity. I would want to get the job done, then slip quietly and anonymously away into the Hong Kong night.
Maybe this is why Wake Insects, Feed Tiger, Beat Little People With Shoes day is not an Approved Hong Kong Tourist Attraction.
Yesterday I ran out of printer ink and went down to a shop on Wellington Street to buy a cartridge. It was a busy lunch hour, and I really enjoy that corner of downtown, where rents are still hanging on and the printing shop owners are working away on ancient metal presses in clanky open storefronts. I meandered up the hill and turned left on Hollywood Road, by the Man Mo Temple. Then, further on, across the street, I spotted something unusual: about 20 ladies were squatting on the sidewalk, lighting candles and incense sticks, laying out cute little paper tigers with a strip of pork fat on their heads, and burning fistfuls of paper in metal cans.
Burning paper in canisters on the street isn't a big deal in Hong Kong. People do it all the time. The little red metal canisters are such a standard household item you can buy them in hardware stores. People habitually burn offerings to ancestors, or to meddlesome spirits. But they don't usually do this in large groups stationed along the sidewalk. And what's with those paper tigers? I went over and asked one of the old ladies if this was a special occasion. She smiled, and said something in Cantonese but the only words I could make out were baai san--pray.
I walked home, trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of this. At the door to my building, the solution appeared in the form of a middle aged lady with a pixie haircut and a blue uniform: Mrs. Wong. Mrs. Wong's official title is "gung leih yuen", in other words, she's my building's security person and doorlady. What that really means is that she's the Empress of our little kingdom here at Profitable View Court. Mrs. Wong knows everybody and everything.
Including what the ladies on Hollywood Road are up to. "Today is Ging Jat," she says, pulling me over to the enormous Chinese calendar that's by her desk and pointing to today, March 6th, a date which has two red Chinese characters on it:
驚 蟄 ging jat. It means, literally, "awakening/hibernation"
Mrs. Wong knows I can speak Cantonese, but she usually embellishes her talks to me with lots of pantomine anyway, just to make sure I get her point. I ask her what "Ging Jat" is, and for a moment she's lost for words. Then she makes a creepy-crawly motion with her ten fingers. "Today the bugs wake up! And you have to hit them! And then the ladies will take their shoes and hit the small people. You should go down to Canal Road in Wan Chai after 6 o' clock, because there will be lots and lots of people beating the shoes. It's part of Hong Kong's history."
I know a little about this. For a long time I've been fascinated by the elderly ladies who set up shop under the overpass on Canal Road. You pay them a few dollars, and they will vigorously slam a shoe into a picture of your enemy while cursing them. It's called "da siu yahn", or "beat the petty little people". When Tung Chee Hwa was Hong Kong's Chief Executive, these ladies did a huge business with disgruntled HK citizens.
But what do the shoe beaters have to do with paper tigers and the insects waking from hibernation?
A little Internet research turns up an enlightening academic article by a Chinese University anthropologist. It seems that Hong Kong people, over the years, have created a pragmatic stew of rituals that all happen simultaneously on the early spring day that Chinese call the "Waking of the Insects."
"Waking Insects" is a sort of Groundhog Day for rural Chinese. If there is thunder on this day, then the insects will wake up, and the rain will come and harvests will be good. If not, tough times ahead.
There aren't a lot of fields left to plow in Hong Kong, so over the decades, Chinese Insect Day has taken on some additional trappings and symbolism. It has also become the day when you feed the tiger (with pork fat--hey, he's a tiger who likes Hong Kong food). And it is considered to be the best day of the year to beat effigies of "petty people" with shoes.
At around 6, I grab the trolley and head to Wan Chai. When I get to the underpass, there are hundreds of people there. The clip-clop of shoes being hammered against benches and bricks sounds like the thunder of a thousand hoofbeats. I make a little video and take a few snapshots.
It's really a scene. There's smoke everywhere, from all the incense and papers burning. A few of the shoe-beating ladies must be especially skilled, for they have a long queue of people lined up and waiting. There are lots of photo hounds with cameras, and I spot some reporters from the Chinese press running around with their notebooks, interviewing people. I'm lost in the swirl, transfixed as one client after another goes through the drill of lighting incense, selecting a piece of paper with a drawing of a man or woman on it, then watching grim-faced and silent as the old woman pulverizes the effigy to shreds with sharp, repeated blows.
My reverie is broken by two eager girls from Carmel Pak U Secondary School in the New Territories. They are making a survey for their school project entitled: A Peaceful Violence--The Ritual of Beating the Petty Person in Hong Kong--would I help them?
I take a look at their list of questions. Do I think that 'Beating the Petty Person' can reflect the Hong Kong culture, and why? Do I think it is good to preserve or even to promote this ritual to the locals or tourists, and why?
Funny you should ask. For I've been wondering all day why this popular and compelling Hong Kong holiday, which draws a huge crowd, is so under the radar. Hong Kong's tourism board, which promotes every major and minor Chinese festival from Mooncake Day to Lantern Lighting, somehow left this one off their list.
I'm about to say something to the girls, when one of the shoe-beater's clients, a guy in his forties, suddenly stands up and starts yelling and waving his hands. His temper tantrum breaks the intense mood and disturbs the workmanlike, determined rhythms of the heels going clop! clop! clop! The schoolgirls look embarrassed, and say maybe he's angry cause the lady didn't beat the shoe long enough for him. (Today the service is twice the usual price--$50 HKD a session, about $7.50 US.)
Anyway, the man eventually gets over his Bus Uncle moment, and the clients return to the serious business of changing their luck and symbolically smashing their enemies to a pulp.
I wander around, and start to take another picture of a shoe-beater and her client. But then the client, a young woman about 30, does something that has never happened to me before in Hong Kong: she puts her hand over the lens of my camera. As I apologize, and back away, it occurs to me that if I were in the process of arranging for my errant husband, or my hated sister, or my rival in love to be ritually beaten by proxy, I wouldn't want someone recording it for posterity. I would want to get the job done, then slip quietly and anonymously away into the Hong Kong night.
Maybe this is why Wake Insects, Feed Tiger, Beat Little People With Shoes day is not an Approved Hong Kong Tourist Attraction.
Hi, 您好! I am one of the schoolgirls! OK, my english is not good so I am going to change my channel..
昨天很慶幸能與您傾談, 希望沒有對您造成妨礙,
起初, 我們看見您身形高大, 正在專注觀察打小人的過程, 好像很深沉似的. 後來我們還是鼓起勇氣向您 say hi!
誰知, 原來您會說標準的廣東話! 但面對著金髮的您, 我們還是自自然然地說起 Chinglish 來!
更想不到的是, 原來您不是純粹一個看熱鬧的路人或遊人, 而是一位專業人士.
對於製作這份研究報告, 我們實在是缺乏相關經驗, 不過, 我們已努力作準備, 希望能對這個香港民俗作出深入而中肯的分析, 並從中學習.
您真的很nice, 很有耐心, 而且我們都認為, 您的回答使我們獲益良多, 十分感謝您!
您又提到一名打手無禮地對待您, 我們也有過類似的經歷. 當然, 我們希望彼此可以友善對待, 和恰相處.
只是對採訪, 上鏡等比較敏感,
也可能是怕醜而不懂表達,
也可能是不想我們外人過份了解有關打小人的鬼神淵源, 認為這是常人不應多探的.
在商言商, 也許她也希望我們付出金錢, 多於"阻住佢地做生意"
不過, 我相信她並沒有惡意的, 希望您不會為此而不開心!
請問我們可以在報告中引用您的口頭意見, 文字, 圖片和影像嗎?
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Thank you so much for your kind words. I was very impressed with you too! Your survey showed a great deal of preparation and work and you knew more about the "Da Siu Yan" customs than anyone else I spoke with.
For those readers of this blog who don't read Chinese, let me mention that these secondary school girls are entering their study in a city-wide competition of student projects on Hong Kong's history and culture. I'm sure everyone will join me in wishing them success.
And also in feeling happy that Hong Kong students understand and appreciate the value of Hong Kong's traditions, customs, and street culture.
Yes, please feel free to use any information or photos from this blog or from our chat together that you think might make an interesting addition to your project.
I really enjoyed meeting you both and wish you luck in the competition.
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I never do 'beating petty people' but I read from a Chinese article before that this custom is not all negative. The article interviewed an old lady working on this. She said they are not to curse the 'enemies'. Instead they are praying for blessings for their clients. After reading this article, I changed my opinion on this job. This is more like a therapy. Too bad I am too far to do it now. Perhaps different people in this 'profession' do things differently. I hope you and your secondary school girl friends can find out whether I am right or wrong. Hopefully when they present this HK custom, let the audience know HK people are not so violent. After all, hitting by a high-heel on the head really kills.
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I think you are right...the ritual does seem to be more like a therapy. For some reason I was thinking of Bus Uncle the whole time I was watching the da siu yan ladies. How Hong Kong society needs a safety valve for all the pent-up stress. "Ngoh yauh ngaat lik, Neih yauh ngaat lik...so let's da siu yan."
Hitting a picture of someone with a shoe hurts nobody. Except maybe the shoe
Fortunately Hong Kong has lots of shoe repair places!
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It's good to hear that efforts are being made to record HK customs while they are still practised. I recently found out about Zao Wang (pinyin - not sure of the Cantonese) the Kitchen God of each kitchen and the traditional of having a feast for him before he goes to heaven to report on the happiness of the family. I asked my Cantonese colleagues about this, most of whom knew of the tradition, but more of something their grandparents did rather than something they practised. Many of these traditions are on the cusp of dying out as modernity progresses and, if they are not recorded now, they will be lost. Much like the folk traditions in the West practised centuries OK which archaeology has uncovered (eg putting a dead cat in the roof of a new house) but we lack the written records to explain.
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Superb posting. I haven't had time to look at the rest of your blog but judging by the standard of the one posting I have read, I'll be back. It makes my own HK blog look so bad :-(
By the way, I got the link through Lonely PLanet's Thorn Tree Forum. And yes, the HK Tourist Board is only really interested in promoting sterile shopping centres and Disneyesque attractions. I live in Wanchai and missed out on what sounds like a fascinating cultural experience.
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Thank you very much!
We will try our very best for this study. It will be done before the end of May. If you are willing to have a look on our project, we would def. like to send you a soft copy or simply a link~~!
Thanks Again!
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