ann
(Ann)
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symptoms culminate in coma accompanied by fever with a mortality rate
of 25 to 50 percent, which occurs within one to three days in untreated
cases. Even those in recovery can suffer acute psychoses and other“post-
malaria neurological syndromes.”^67
So“malaria”is in substantial measure a reification of complex inter-
connections that appear as a particular range of febrile diseases in
humans. It is, thus, more accurate to speak of a malarial, or even more
precisely aP. falciparum, disease environment in southwestern Yunnan.
Accounts that stress the imprecise nature ofzhangqitend to construct
malaria in essentialized terms that obscure the diversity of these relations
and their multiple effects on human physiology. It is true that malarial
relations were hardly the only ones constituting western Yunnan’s larger
disease environment. Yunnan also contains several subareas of“enzootic
foci,”breeding grounds for plague bacilli transmitted to humans mainly
throughfleas on animal hosts, especially rodents. However, the muddle
made of these distinctions and relations by premodern Chinese culture,
which could distinguish betweenzhangqias a climate condition and
outbreaks of “plague” (yi) as omens, can be exaggerated, if not
dismissed.^68
Yunnan’s malarial disease environment is further complicated by the
diversity and adaptability of mosquitoes themselves.An. minimusis just
one of many species indigenous to southwestern China, but it is the main
vector for malarial haematozoa across Southeast Asia, including south-
western China.^69 An. minimusnevertheless remains so taxonomically
muddled that it is currently impossible to identify all members of what
specialists call the“Minimus Complex,”which definitely includes two
mainland Southeast Asian malarial species, An. miminus A and C.
Further complicating factors include each species’ varying rate of
malarial transmission, their different abilities to acclimate to control
measures, etc. These are all related to geographical differences in the
highly adaptable complex that is apparently scattered from eastern India
to Taiwan. The preference of the complex for ideal breeding conditions
near slowly running clear water with partially shaded grassy margins
commonly found among foothills can leaveAn. miminusvulnerable to
both human intervention and ecological fluctuation, particularly
deforestation. However, the presence of breeding populations in urban
areas in Vietnam and India suggests thatAn. miminuscanflourish within
a considerable range of conditions, so anthropogenic change has not
always been hostile to it. British India’s large-scale irrigation projects
notoriously replicated malarial disease environments, with a subsequent
The Nature of Imperial Indigenism in Southwestern Yunnan 193
