The ethnic Yi group has a population of about 7 million, with most living deep in the rolling mountains of southwest China.  Of the 7 million total, about 2 million live in areas in southern Sichuan Province that are covered by two mountain ranges, the Greater and Lesser Liangshan, and about 5 million live in Yunnan, an area that lies further south. Most Yi are poor, living on meager incomes from crops they manage to farm on largely barren, almost inaccessible mountain slopes. Addicts among them mostly buy cheap heroin, the kind that is often mixed with impurities such as pain killers,  and they usually take the drug by inhalation, rather than intravenous injection.
    Doctors worldwide are trying to help intravenous addicts with medication or surgery. Chinese anthropologists, however, have found a “cultural strength” in  centuries-old folk customs and traditions that could be used to counteract biological habituation.
    As a matter of fact, doctors and Chinese anthropologists are tackling the same problem, but with two different approaches - one scientific and the other cultural. The so-called “Tiger’s Day pattern,” advanced by Professor Zhuang Kongshao, aims, in particular, to help low-income ethnic Yi addicts who take heroin by inhalation, with a large population base and scattered over a large area. The Tiger’s Day ritual has proved effective in helping some ethnic Yi addicts rid themselves of their physical and psychological dependence on drugs. It has been victorious over drug use in those ethnic Yi families where traditional beliefs remain strong and old folkways still hold sway. These lineages have a combined population of about 2 million, hence the value of the Tiger’s Day ritual that declares war on drug abuse even though people elsewhere, city people in particular, may not understand it fully.
    Through field studies, anthropologists have concluded that it is possible for  human beings to use their cultural assets to solve some of the knotty problems in modern society, even though such assets are essentially neutral. The Tiger’s Day pattern, so to speak, epitomizes what is referred to as “cultural strength.”
    The human race is biological by nature while living in different cultural surroundings. Different lineages of the same ethnic group are culturally identical, while living somewhat different lifestyles and conditions due to influences exerted by what sociologists call “socialization.” Despite such differences, the cultural identity of these lineages, or the basic cultural features of the ethnic group to which they belong, can be strong and this is true especially for family members living in remote, outlying regions, for example, in those ethnic Yi villages where the Tiger’s Day ritual is performed. In other words, a powerful cultural strength is innate in such ethnic communities.
    Maybe one has reason to question the value of ethnic practices like the Tiger’s Day ritual. Scientific findings can and must be quantified, but how can one define things like the Tiger’s Day ritual in quantitative terms? It has to be admitted that these cannot be quantified, but the results can be verified.