Sometimes I visualize a scene with the big shot holding the umbrella for the subordinate. Call it a reversal of power display. It's comical. For instance, Queen Elizabeth II holding a parasol on her own; or George W Bush struggling with an upturned umbrella. Many young Chinese laughed when they first saw these photos and then sank into meditation.
It is ironic that "holding the umbrella" has the opposite meaning when used figuratively. While in real life it is always the minion who holds it over the superior, in language the holder of the umbrella is the one providing protection and making an offer that can't be refused.
There is an old saying about the umbrella that was famously misinterpreted. It is called "a monk holding an umbrella". On the surface it seems to depict a scene of misery. But actually it is a play on words. Monks have shaved heads, and "hairless" sounds like "lawless" in Chinese. With an umbrella separating the monk and the sky it becomes "skyless", which, figuratively, means a disregard of heaven and its decrees. So, a monk with an umbrella over his head is an indirect way of saying: "See no law, see no heaven".
Chairman Mao Zedong, in a flourish of braggadocio, used this term when talking to American journalist Edgar Snow while looking over the Tian'anmen Rostrum in his golden years. The translator did a dutiful job of converting the words and the image, but not the implied meaning, into English. And the West got a self-pitying picture of the Great Helmsman.
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