I sell filmed villain hitting rituals, so read this comparison with some suspicion. Here is my attempt to deserve less of it. The best way to get 打小人 done is to stand under a flyover in Hong Kong and hand a woman in her seventies about HK$50 in cash, and the first section of this article tells you how. The other four options, including mine, exist for people who cannot do that. I have ranked all five in the order I would choose them myself.
The short version
| Option | Cost | Wait | You receive | Real practitioner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Go yourself | About HK$50, cash | None, walk up | The whole ritual, in person | Yes |
| Send a friend in Hong Kong | About HK$50 plus a favour | Whenever they get to it | Phone footage, if they remember to film | Yes |
| Tour platform package | Around HK$323 at the time of writing | Video quoted at up to around 14 days | A video | Yes |
| App simulation | Free to a few dollars | Instant | An animation | No |
| Filmed service (ours) | US$15 | Filmed within 6 days, video within 72 hours of filming | Uncut video, 30-second cut, photo of the ashes | Yes |
Option 1: go yourself
The stalls sit under the Canal Road Flyover, which everyone calls Goose Neck Bridge, 鵝頸橋, on the seam between Causeway Bay and Wan Chai. Either MTR station works. Walk toward Canal Road and look for the smoke. You do not book anything. You walk up, pick a stall, tell the practitioner the name of your villain, and pay about HK$50 in cash. Bring small notes.
The practitioners are mostly women in their sixties to eighties, and they have seen every kind of grievance you could bring them. I wrote about a few of the regulars in meet the aunties of Canal Road Flyover. You do not need Cantonese. In my experience a first name written on a piece of paper crosses the language gap fine, and the aunties fill in the rest with gestures you will understand.
The ritual itself runs eight movements and takes around ten minutes. She invites the deities, states your case out loud, and passes the paper offerings over fire. Then the part you came for: she beats a paper effigy of your villain with the heel of a shoe. Afterward she feeds pork fat to a paper White Tiger and burns it, scatters rice and five-colour beans to settle what was stirred up, burns gold paper for your benefactors, and finishes by throwing moon blocks to show you how it landed. The full sequence, with what each movement means, is in what is da siu yan.
Go in person because the video versions, mine included, flatten the thing. Traffic crosses overhead the whole time. The smoke gets in your clothes. The shoe is louder than you expect. Hong Kong put the practice on its first intangible cultural heritage inventory in 2014, and it earned the listing under that flyover, in exactly this form.
The peak day is Jingzhe, 驚蟄, in early March, when tradition says the insects wake and the petty people stir with them. Expect queues that day. I wrote about it in Jingzhe, the day of the curse. Any other day works too.
Option 2: send a friend who lives there
If you know someone in Hong Kong, ask them. It costs them an errand and about HK$50, and you get the ritual done by a real practitioner at the real bridge for the price of a favour.
Make it easy for them. Send the villain’s first name and a one-line grievance the practitioner can read out, and ask your friend to film from the moment the shoe comes out through the moon blocks at the end. Send the HK$50 through whatever payment app you both use, plus enough for a coffee.
The failure modes are ordinary ones. Your friend has a life, so the errand slips a few weeks. Phone footage comes out shaky when it comes out at all. None of that is fatal. If the person is reliable and the timing does not matter to you, this beats every paid option below.
Option 3: tour platform packages
Booking platforms sell villain hitting as a packaged experience, and Klook is the one people ask me about. At the time of writing, packages there have sold for around HK$323 , with video delivery quoted at up to around 14 days , and reviews have been mixed .
The extra money buys you the platform. You pay by card in your own currency, and if something goes wrong a large company with a support desk sits between you and the problem. Some packages bundle extras beyond the ritual itself, so read the listing to see what the price covers. For some buyers that structure is worth roughly six times the stall price. I ran the numbers on every option, ours included, in villain hitting prices in 2026.
The delivery lag is the real cost. Two weeks is a long time to stay angry at the same person, and the moment you wanted marked can pass before the video arrives. If the timing does not matter and you trust marketplaces more than small operators, this is a defensible pick.
Option 4: app simulations
Apps exist that simulate the ritual on your phone. A cartoon shoe comes down on a cartoon figure, sometimes with sound effects, and it costs nothing or close to it. I will not name them, because I have no quarrel with them and they are honest about what they are.
No practitioner is involved and nothing burns. There is no bridge, and there is no footage of a real event, because no real event took place. If what you want is a button to press when your boss emails at 11pm, an app gives you that instantly and in private. If you want the folk ritual, an animation of it stays an animation of it.
Option 5: filmed services, ours included
Last, services like mine, which take orders online and film a real practitioner performing the real ritual at the bridge. At the time of writing at least one other operator does this. I will not compare us point by point, since I would be grading my own homework. Read their published terms, read how it works on our side, and decide with both open.
Here is what ordering from us looks like. You order the filmed ritual for US$15, paid once through Stripe. You give your villain’s first name, choose a villain type, and write a one-line grievance. The practitioner reads that line out loud at the stall before the shoe comes out.
We batch orders into one or two filming sessions a week. If we have not filmed yours within 6 days of your order, we refund you in full. We do not reschedule, because a queue that rolls forward forever is worse than money back. Once your ritual is filmed, the video reaches your email within 72 hours. You receive three things: the full uncut ritual, eight to twelve minutes long; a 30-second vertical captioned cut you can post as is; and a photo of the ashes. The practitioner gets her full rate before the business takes anything.
People ask whether it works. No idea. The practitioners say the effect starts in about a week. What I can promise is that a woman in her seventies will hit a piece of paper with a shoe on your behalf, and you will have the footage. If that promise sounds thin to you, go back to option 1 and buy the real afternoon instead.
Two rules before you order. First names only; we accept no surnames and no photographs. And we refuse orders on public figures, however deserving they may look from where you sit. The step-by-step, including what makes a good one-line grievance, is in how to order villain hitting online.