The Vanished Miasma:Illness And Disease Of A Border Wa Village

With the demarcation of the Sino-Myanmar borders in 1961,the State's power extended to Banhong tribe for the first time.Modern biomedical system was mingled with traditional Chinese medicine knowledge,and along with this process it entered the local society.Mysterious disease legend and miasma in west Yunnan were redefined and classified as "scientific" facts during the period,the State has established its own legitimacy through "Hygienic Modernity" by eradicating the miasma.This article is built on the medical concept of miasma,taking the ethnography of the Wa village of border Yunnan as an example,the researcher will try to explain the diseases and illnesses of Banhong people from the local internal perspective.The article has discussed two different medical systems for understanding disease and treatment in the Banhong village,but whether it is an injection or soul seeking,these are external and physical treatments in practice.The logic behind biomedicine or Moba's exorcism ritual help people to understand what the disease itself is,and then adopting appropriate treatments based on this understanding.When all the treatments failed,Banhong people turned back to the cause of the disease and looked back on the related events that caused their sickness.Through the process of continuous selfreflection,Banhong people unconsciously become aware of the hidden State behind their illnesses and diseases,and they clearly realized its own vulnerability at the same time.This research has depicted the everyday life of the Banhong Wa ethnic group in the discourse of nationalization,and through the illness narrative of each individual,it explores the issue of the embodied nation of a marginal ethnic group of Southwest China.