China

Time to Beat Your Enemies

By Ling Woo Liu | March 6, 2009 | +

March 5-March 7 is 惊蛰 (jingzhe, or “Waking of the Insects”), a lunar holiday observed almost exclusively in Hong Kong. People here mark the occasion by seeking out elderly women to use a shoe or slipper to beat the pulp out of a strip of paper that symbolizes a backstabbing coworker, cheating spouse or gossiping neighbor. This ritual is called 打小人, meaning “Beat the Petty Person,” and this year some customers came out with the economy weighing heavily on their minds. “The financial economy is not so good right now,” says Elaine Wong, a logistics saleswoman queuing in line to pay for a beating. “I came last year and I still have a job, so I think this is pretty effective.”

There was fierce competition among some of the practitioners this year. TIME Asia intern Anka Lee and I witnessed a heated shouting match between three of the grannies early Wednesday morning. Gu Yanzhi, 77, has performed 打小人 for the past seven years. Though most customers didn’t show up until Thursday, Gu set up her Guanyin statue, paper tigers, fruit, leaves, and incense Wednesday morning and slept outside overnight in order to reserve her spot under Wanchai’s Canal Road overpass, a popular 打小人 location. At about $6 per beating session, she said she makes up to $500 a day during jingzhe. “Some people got laid off, some people feel betrayed,” says Gu. “So they want to get back at people.”

Beating the Petty Person is a relatively understudied tradition. For the most in-depth English analysis, see this article by former Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Chien Chiao.

Related Topics: beat petty person, culture, hong kong, superstitions, China

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  • johnsmith9876

    Bush, Obama, Brown, etc. etc. should be shaking in their boots.

  • eecavazos

    So that’s what was going on, I always wondered. Thanks.

  • sing666

    John:
    Remember this video

    You mother must have used service. Rumor has it that your mother just got an apologze from the airline for the video being posted on Youtube.

  • sinibaldi1

    Persuasive ideality.

    Under the
    sun of a cold
    winter the
    greatest emotion
    becomes a
    noble seaside,
    with the
    care of my
    life near a
    delicate mirth.

    Francesco Sinibaldi

  • johnsmith9876

    sing666, the ultimate example of a Chinese in their best behavior, just proved that the Chinese technique of getting their way worked. The Cathay Pacific has given her a business class ticket for her act in the Hong Kong Airport, as a last resort to salvage the reputation Cathay as an airline for so called civilized Chinese air passengers. Her performance is for all to see on Youtube, of course.

    sing666 is a great contributor the the Chinese reputation of telling the truth. She is going to be good spokeswoman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

  • johnsmith9876

    It is all clear now. Officials from Sichuan clarified that the tofu school buildings had nothing to do with their collapsing in the quake last year. It was all nature’s fault. Now we can moved on and not dwell on it any more. We should never discuss anything in China prior to 2009 from now on.

  • johnsmith9876

    A deputy minister of the Chinese Foreign Affairs declared that sing666′s performance at Hong Kong Airport was due to a “cultural difference”. That means sing666′s behavior is part of the Chinese culture that we all should expect from Chinese everywhere. This deputy minister stop short at calling it a normal Chinese behavior.

  • johnsmith9876

    Chinese don’t have any bad behavior, just different, with Chinese characteristics:
    http://tinyurl.com/dfaoum

  • johnsmith9876

    I am sure that is behavior – “stripped to their underwear” – is not a strange behavior, just different from navies of other nations. This may be a standard and normal operation procedure for the Chinese navy – when being threatened by an unarmed vessel:
    http://tinyurl.com/bk7cma

    The US navy better be careful. If the US vessel ever got rammed by the Chinese speed boats, your lumbering, slow moving ship that takes a mile to turn will be accused of ramming the speed boats at high speed.

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