The twenty year old informant from Hong Kong claimed “My grandma… she use to… she use to scare me as child because I played with an umbrella… you know how some umbrellas are pretty” She shyly admitted, “I used to play with them indoors but my grandma said I would be short and I believed her.”

As in most cultures, the elder is the keeper of traditions. In this particular case the superstition was passed orally as a warning from one generation to the next and was only talked about when someone defied the superstition. Another informant re-confirmed this superstition claiming to have learned it from his parents. I asked if there was something wrong with being short she informed me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. “It was just something to scare me.