![“If [Trump] loses, we must celebrate,” the villain hitter said as she beat a photo of the US president with the sharp heel of an old shoe. Screenshots via Twitter/t1ffany4scale](https://cdn.coconuts.co/coconuts/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/hong-kong-trump-villain-hitting-960x540.png)
The “villain hitters” who perform traditional exorcism rituals beneath a Causeway Bay flyover are used to taking it out on spiteful bosses and unfaithful ex-lovers.
Sometimes, they get a less conventional request, like to bring wrath upon US President Donald Trump. As the future of the United States—hinging on the nation’s most consequential elections in history—hangs in the balance, it’s a timely behest.
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Tiffany Sia and her friends visited a villain hitter on Tuesday, asking the woman to perform the damning ceremony on Trump.
Using an old slipper, the woman forcefully smacks the photo for about two minutes straight, tearing into the piece of paper and poking holes into his face with the sharp heel of the shoe.
Then, she rips the paper apart, picking up every last shred that had fallen to the ground. “Even if it’s just [a] small [piece of paper], we want to burn it all,” she says before stuffing the scraps into a paper tiger as an offering to the evil powers that be.
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To finish off the ritual, the villain hitter tosses the Trump-in-tiger into a burning fire.
“Be reduced to ashes,” she proclaims with satisfaction.
Villain hitters have on occasion used their magic to curse politicians, especially during times of heightened anti-government sentiment in the city. While some refuse such requests, others happily wish a lifetime of hellish misery on Chief Executive Carrie Lam when asked to.
The villain hitting ritual is native to the rural villages of southern China, where farmers allegedly performed the act to cast out evil spirits.
Today, around half a dozen villain hitters provide their voodoo services beneath the Canal Road flyover. They sit a stone’s throw away from the high-end Times Square shopping mall, but with their traditional miniature shrines and burning joss sticks, they may as well be a world away.
The city’s tourism board includes the sorcerous ceremony among a list of Hong Kong’s “countless time-honoured traditions,” alongside feng shui and tai chi.
The relentless beating and cursing of the controversial US president might have provided a moment of catharsis for Sia and her friends, but some in Hong Kong—especially supporters of the city’s pro-democracy movement who reject left-wing politics—would beg to differ.
On the popular forum LIHKG, protesters have created hundreds of threads supporting for Trump, who they think would be tougher on China than Democrat candidate Joe Biden if re-elected.
With the results shaping up to suggest a Biden victory, many protesters are parroting the rhetoric of American far-right news sources and commentators, believing the elections to be rife with voter fraud.
On Twitter, some have even shared an online petition to the White House demanding a vote recount in Arizona. “[T]he count was called too soon when more than a million votes were NOT accounted for,” a description on the petition website claimed without evidence.
