portrait photo
goes here, with permission
goes here, with permission
[PLACEHOLDER: practitioner name]
[PLACEHOLDER: years at the bridge, how she learned the trade, what she is known for.]
[PLACEHOLDER QUOTE: why she still does this work]
Who does the work
The aunties of Goose Neck Bridge
Your ritual is not performed by us. It is performed by a woman who has done this for longer than most companies exist, at a stall you could walk up to tomorrow.
The place
Under the flyover
The Canal Road Flyover crosses between Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, and the ritual lives in the shade beneath it: a row of small stalls with plastic stools, shrines, bricks, and boxes of paper goods. Trams pass one side, traffic rumbles overhead. Tradition put the practice in liminal places, under bridges and beside roads, and this bridge became its home in Hong Kong.
The trade
Folk practice, not clergy
The practitioners are mostly women in their sixties to eighties. Some learned from their mothers, some took the trade up mid-life. Villain hitting is folk religion, passed hand to hand rather than taught in any temple, and it entered Hong Kong's first intangible cultural heritage inventory in 2014. The trade is ageing; few young people take it up. We wrote more about that in our profile of the bridge.
Your practitioner
The women we work with
We film with a small number of practitioners who agreed to be recorded. Their profiles below will be completed with their own words, once they have given them.
portrait photo
goes here, with permission
goes here, with permission
[PLACEHOLDER: practitioner name]
[PLACEHOLDER: years at the bridge, how she learned the trade, what she is known for.]
[PLACEHOLDER QUOTE: what she refuses to do, and why]
The line they draw
What they turn away
The aunties refuse politicians and public figures for their own reasons. We refuse surnames and photographs for ours: a video naming an identifiable person is a weapon, and nobody at this bridge is in the weapons business. First names only, on their side and ours.
The arrangement
Full rate, paid first
For every order, the practitioner is paid her full rate before we take anything. She performs the ritual exactly as she would for a walk-up customer; the only difference is the camera. If you are in Hong Kong, skip us entirely: it is about HK$50 at the stall, cash, no appointment, between Causeway Bay and Wan Chai MTR. Details on how the filmed version works if you can't get here.