Well when I was little my grandma and my dad uhm would always tell me that the “old man”  called ông già in Vietnamese would catch me when I did something bad, so if I didn’t eat my vegetables or didn’t go to bed on time they would in a creepy voice that the old man was going to get me – also when they said it they opened their eyes really big and looked actually scared so I felt I should be scared of this creature as well because it made my elders scared – to me it was never a guy just this horrible figure who would just snatch me…actually I never knew what would happen after he caught me, I just knew I’d didn’t want to be caught, and so all of my brothers and I were raised on this story and it was a way for my parents to control us easier so that we wouldn’t misbehave so like there was even a slight rebellious flare they would say “ông già is coming!” and we would immediately shame up and do whatever they said. I don’t know if they ever described it to me but I always imagined it to be very dirty and yellow eyes and dirty messy hair, and always starving and I guess I associated it with eating me. So whenever my dad tried to scare me ay night I would always look to the window because I thought he would come in through there.

Many of the folklore traditions that I read about are different cultures having various stories about these monsters or entities that the older people or parents would use in order to make sure the children would obey or listen to them when they told them to do something.  These creatures were supposed to scare them and make them believe if they disobeyed bad things will happen, so in this way respect towards the elders was built at the same time.