David Dodwell

Outside In | We may not like rats, but we do a good job of making them feel at home

Far from being a particularity in Hong Kong, rodent problems are a fixture of urban environments the world over

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A worker sets a trap with sweet potato as bait for catching rodents in Wan Chai on May 20, 2019, during a three-month citywide campaign launched by the Food and Environment Hygiene Department to prevent the spread of rat hepatitis E. Photo: Sam Tsang

David Dodwell

Published: 9:30am, 29 Jun 2024Updated: 3:01pm, 29 Jun 2024

Earlier this week, I got an out-of-the-blue LinkedIn message from a Singapore-based TV producer. She wanted to talk to me about rats in Hong Kong.

On the phone the next morning, the producer explained that, as a follow-up to a programme on rat problems in Singapore, her team would be visiting Hong Kong in July to learn more about Hong Kong’s rat problems. She was calling me because I wrote about rats here for the Post in early 2019.

Numerous thoughts rushed to mind. First, I had to scour my brain to remember what I had written. Rats, after all, are not something I write or think about often. Second, I was pleased to discover that someone was reading my column – especially one written over five years ago.

Third, how come so little has been written about Hong Kong’s rats in the past five years that this journalist needed to resort to my ancient article? But perhaps most important and depressing of all, why is it that so many so often think of Hong Kong only in negative terms? For sure, that Singaporean news team will be hoping that however bad their city’s rat problems might be, Hong Kong’s will surely be worse.

I am reminded of the appalling 2003 Sars crisis, during which some speculated about whether the virus was being spread by cats, rats or other even more improbable ways. I recall thinking the foreign media could be forgiven for believing that Mong Kok was comparable to some rat-infested slum.

But back to our rat story. The call was a depressing reminder of international prejudices that depict Hong Kong so consistently in negative terms, aggravated recently by the 2019 street rioting, the severity of the Covid restrictions, international media hostility towards national security laws and a perception that Hongkongers now live cowed under the totalitarian control of the Communist Party.

Thinking back to my 2019 research on rats, I am reminded of how hard it was back then to discover the world’s rat population or their numbers in the world’s major cities. Rats don’t exactly queue up to be counted, and data is imprecise. I recall one note unhelpfully observing that “everyone agrees [brown rats] outnumber us - but no one seems eager to count”.