This is a common way for Chinese parents to prevent children from crying. 

However, if the tiger story doesn’t work, the children would have a chance to visit a fortune-teller or a witch who is invariably an old lady, for the Chinese believe that every little kid has the ability to see ghosts. 

Whenever a baby, who keeps crying for a long night, would be considered that he must have seen something horrible like some kind of dead people which can hardly be seen by grown-ups. The only way to express is crying. 

So there would be a couple of old ladies as witches in every town in order to solve this sort of problem. 

Once my daughter was crying day and night at her very early age, I had taken her to see a witch who was living close to a market. 

As soon as the old lady had been told what was happening, she put a cup of water on the table and began praying while she was writing strange words by her finger above the water in the air. 

A few minutes later, my daughter was instructed to drink the water. Then I gave her some money which was packed into a tiny red paper bag. 

Much to my surprise, the water worked. My daughter slept very well for the following nights. 

No one could explain, but the old lady had indeed made it. 

There were some other old wives' tales or lies my parents kept telling me during my growing up.

For instance, whenever I carelessly ate a seed of fruits, they would tell me that a tree would soon be growing on my head. 

The most funny lie is that whether a girl a boy will marry coming from far or not largely depends on the way of his holding chopsticks whenever he is having a meal. 

I used to hold the end of a pair of chopsticks during meals, so my mom kept telling me that I would marry a girl coming from far away. Sure enough, my wife comes from the middle of China where is over 1000 kilometers away while I have been living in the southern.