Taipei's Rat Problem: From the 1896 Governor-General's Plague Order to the 2026 Dax'an Hantavirus Case

Thirty-Second Overview

On January 13, 2026, a man in his 70s in Dax'an District died from sepsis complicated by multiple organ failure; by the end of the month, he was confirmed to have Hantavirus Syndrome—Taiwan's first hantavirus fatality since 2001. Family members confirmed signs of rodents at his residence, and two brown rats captured by the Environmental Protection Bureau in the surrounding area tested positive for hantavirus antibodies¹. From this day forward, Taipei's "rat problem" shifted from a quirky news item to a municipal-level crisis; yet few noticed that, also in January 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture announced a complete ban on using household kitchen waste for pig feeding. Taipei's 126 metric tons of daily kitchen waste now enter garbage trucks, incinerators, and sewers. When pigs no longer eat kitchen waste, Taipei's rat population found a new meal ticket.

1. One Patient Brings the Rat Problem Back to the News

If one were to pick a turning point in Taipei's rat history, it would be the afternoon of January 31, 2026—when Luo Yi-chun, Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stood at a press conference to announce that a man in his 70s in Dax'an District had died of hantavirus syndrome, marking the first fatality in Taiwan since 2001². Family members stated that rodents had recently been active in the home; two brown rats captured by environmental units around the residence tested positive for hantavirus antibodies³.

Within two weeks, "rats" became a key term in Taipei. A video filmed by a Hong Kong tourist at Raohe Night Market went viral on Threads: a brown rat casually emerged from the stall of Chuan Zui Xiang Spicy Hot Pot, gnawing on rice blood cake in the braised food ingredient area⁴. Looking back to 2024, the Shinkong Sanjie Xinyi A8 Food Street was witnessed by the public as having rats emerge from the serving window of a noodle shop, with chefs using umbrellas to drive them away. Snack shops in Ximending and Guanghua Night Market were also photographed by the Health Bureau with rats carrying food, resulting in fines under the Food Safety Act⁵⁶⁷.

Even the Taipei Metro was dragged into the controversy. On February 7, the Taipei Metro issued a press release stating it would "continuously strengthen rodent control," launching cleaning and disinfection across all stations and trains, and monthly commissioning vendors to set up trapping equipment⁸. A bureaucratic statement that neither denies nor confirms the issue was enough to make people realize: this is not an isolated incident, but a problem of the entire city.

📝 Curator's Note: When a virus fatality occurred in Dax'an District, every previously ignored rat was seen anew—the "rat population" did not suddenly explode; rather, it was a matter of "visibility."

2. The Forgotten Timeline: In 1896, Taipei Also Had People Die from Rats

Few remember that the war between Taipei and rats was the first domestic issue the Japanese Governor-General's Office had to address.

When Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, Taiwan was viewed as a "land of miasma," with malaria and plague rampant in the urban areas; city roads were narrow, residences dense, and sewage discharged directly onto the streets, seeping into the ground⁹. In April 1896 (Meiji 29), plague broke out at Anping Port, spreading rapidly along the Tamsui River to Dadaocheng in Taipei; the estimated death toll for the entire island that year exceeded 200, making it one of the most severe epidemics of the early Japanese colonial period¹⁰.

Also in July 1896, Taiwan Governor-General's Office Health Advisor Nobuomi Gotō invited Scottish engineer William K. Burton to Taiwan to conduct an investigation, proposing the Taipei Sanitary Works Plan that would influence future generations. Burton argued that Taipei must have independent water supply and sewerage systems, that illegal street houses must be demolished, and that alleyways must be widened—this plan directly gave rise to the subsequent Taipei Urban Plan⁹¹¹. After Gotō became Civil Affairs Commissioner in 1898, he officially promoted the House Building Regulations, mandatory cleaning, rat inspection and buying (citizens could exchange rats for money), and cremation of rat corpses under the name of "plague countermeasures," reducing Taiwan's death rate from approximately 4.0% in 1895 to 2.46% in 1912¹²¹³.

In other words, Taipei's sewerage, street blocks,骑楼 (covered walkways), and waste management systems were originally born to "deal with rats." When 2026 Taipei residents saw a plump brown rat flash by on Yongkang Street, they were actually looking at a problem defined 130 years ago—the opponent had simply changed generations.

3. Who Lives on Taipei Streets? Three Types of Rats, Three Maps

There are three common rodent species in Taiwan's metropolitan areas: house mice (6–10 cm in body length), roof rats (16–21 cm), and brown rats (18–25 cm)¹⁴¹⁵.

• Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus): The protagonist of Taipei streets, restaurant back kitchens, fire alleys, and night markets. Strong swimmers, they live in sewers and drainage ditches, deriving calories from kitchen waste grease.
• Roof Rat (Rattus rattus): Skilled climbers, they rely on old apartment ceilings, exterior wall vines, and electrical conduits to form a highway connecting entire streets.
• House Mouse (Mus musculus): The smallest and most elusive, commonly residing in boxes and piles of rags.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare's CDC's long-term monitoring at Taichung Port from 2017–2020 showed that the rodent composition in Taiwan's ports and urban environments is dominated by brown rats, followed by roof rats; this ratio has not changed significantly over the past 20 years¹⁶. Meaning: in 2026, no new batch of rats arrived; it was the same group of rats with suddenly increased food availability.

📝 Curator's Note: The rat in Dax'an District that tested positive for hantavirus is the descendant, in the same species, same genome, and same sewer line, of the one your grandmother saw when she was young.

4. The New Meal Ticket: January 2026, Kitchen Waste Ban for Pig Feeding

This is the least discussed but most critical piece of the story.

In October 2025, Taiwan's first case of African Swine Fever broke out in Taichung, traced back to pig farms using uncooked kitchen waste¹⁷. The central government quickly made a decision: household kitchen waste would be completely banned for pig feeding starting January 1, 2026¹⁸.

What does this policy mean for Taipei? According to figures published by the Taipei Environmental Protection Bureau itself: sanitation teams recycle approximately 126 metric tons of household kitchen waste daily, of which about 3% belongs to "pig-feeding kitchen waste" that is cooked; after the new system takes effect, garbage trucks collecting kitchen waste will no longer distinguish between red and blue bins, all switching to composting or incineration¹⁹²⁰. To digest the suddenly increased kitchen waste, the Environmental Protection Bureau even announced multiple extensions of free incineration services for non-household pig-feeding kitchen waste until the end of 2025²¹²².

The question is: between the kitchen waste bin and the incinerator, there is a stretch of road belonging to rats.

When pig farmers no longer collect kitchen waste from all over the city daily, when the kitchen waste handling routes for night markets and restaurants are reorganized, and when sanitation team collection frequency and container designs are still in transition, that "no-man's land" becomes a feast for brown rats. A rodent expert interviewed by Wuo Wuo clearly stated: brown rat populations have a strong compensatory reproductive capacity; after killing a batch, the remaining individuals will quickly reproduce back; the key is never rat poison, but garbage and kitchen waste²³.

📝 Curator's Note: In January 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture ended a "kitchen waste → pig" pathway that had lasted half a century; by the end of that same month, the first hantavirus fatality in 25 years appeared in Taipei. These two events are not a coincidence, but the result of a system redistributing calories.

5. The City Government's Choice: Spraying Poison and the Backlash It Caused

Facing explosive public opinion, the Taipei Environmental Protection Bureau's response was "precision poisoning," using centrally approved environmental pesticides (mostly anticoagulants like "Ratex"), emphasizing兼顾 pet safety²⁴.

But this choice was almost immediately shot down by three forces simultaneously:

1. The Central Ministry of Environment: Environment Minister Peng Chih-ming publicly called on May 2 for rodent control to adopt the "Three No's" principle of "environmental cleanup as primary, poisoning as secondary"—do not let rats come, do not let rats stay, do not let rats eat. The Environmental Protection Bureau's own rodent control FAQ writes it exactly this way²⁵²⁶.

2. The Ecological Academic Community: The Sun Yuan-hsün team from the Bird Ecology Research Lab at Pingtung University of Science and Technology published research in the 2019 Science of the Total Environment indicating that anticoagulant rodenticide residues were commonly detected in Taiwan's raptors (black kites, crested goshawks, peregrine falcons), and the concentration was highly correlated with the government's long-term promotion of "Rodent Control Weeks" in the past²⁷²⁸.

3. The Ministry of Agriculture's Own Historical Lesson: Due to a series of black kite poisoning deaths, the Council of Agriculture (now Ministry of Agriculture) gradually canceled the 40-year-old "National Agricultural Land Rodent Control Week" starting in 2015, formally declaring that Taiwan's rodent control had shifted from "spraying poison" to science and ecology-friendly methods²⁹³⁰.

In other words: when the agricultural sector had already walked out of the "Rodent Control Week" era due to raptor conservation, the Taipei Environmental Protection Bureau spraying poison on the streets in 2026 was equivalent to picking up a tool the countryside had just discarded ten years ago and using it in the city.

On May 4, Environmental Protection Bureau Director Hsu Shih-hsun was forced to soften his stance, saying they would try to "integrate and publish rat hole filling, poison usage information, and relative hotspot maps"^[31]; the next day, Mayor Ko Wen-je stepped forward to promise to formulate specific countermeasures for "overall urban environmental cleaning and disinfection"^[32]³¹. Opposition city councilor Hsu Shu-hua simultaneously fired back: cross-bureau meetings were held only three times, half a beat slow^[34].

📝 Curator's Note: "Spraying poison is visible; cleaning cracks is invisible"—this is the fundamental political economy of Taipei's rat control. Under election pressure, visibility is more important than effectiveness.

6. Invisible Infrastructure: Combined Sewers,骑楼, Night Markets

Taipei's rat problem is essentially an infrastructure rat problem.

• Combined Sewers: The old city districts of Taipei share culverts for rainwater and sewage, providing brown rats with perfect habitat corridors—water year-round, food, no natural predators.
• 骑楼 (Covered Walkways) and Fire Alleys: Kitchen waste bins behind merchant back doors, night market sewage ditches, and cardboard garbage piled in fire alleys constitute a stable food supply. Legislator Shen Po-yang pointed out three major loopholes—food sources, pipeline intrusion, and piled materials—all concentrated in this invisible back alley^[35]. EBC News directly filmed in February the fire alleys behind the "Restaurant Street" of citizens on Dunhua South Road in Dax'an District, where rats scurried day and night^[36].
• Old Apartments: In old districts like Dax'an, Zhongzheng, and Wanhua,骑楼 flower beds, outward-extending illegal structures, and pipeline gaps are all paradises for roof rats.

The Environmental Protection Bureau's own rodent control FAQ order is written very clearly: "Do not let rats come → Do not let rats stay → Do not let rats eat"—environmental cleanup and blocking pores come first, poisoning comes last^[26]. The same "Three No's" principle is also written into the Taipei Metro's control SOP^[8]. But under public panic, councilor inquiries, and media lenses, this order is often executed in reverse.

7. Hantavirus: A Misread Risk

The three characters "Hantavirus" appeared repeatedly in the news in the spring of 2026, but its true epidemiological image is quite different from general imagination.

Hantavirus is transmitted through aerosols formed by the drying of urine, feces, and saliva from rodents such as brown rats and house mice; if humans inhale contaminated dust, they may become infected^[37]. It does not transmit from person to person, with Taiwan confirming only single-digit cases annually, and no fatalities in the past 25 years^[2]³². Therefore, CDC Deputy Director Luo Yi-chun emphasized at the press conference that the focus is not on the fact that "the dragon kingdom has rats," but on wearing masks when cleaning rodent traces, wetting with diluted bleach before sweeping, and avoiding dust generation^[37].

The "squirrels also transmit hantavirus" panic that once appeared on social media was simultaneously denied by the medical community and the CDC—squirrels are not known hantavirus hosts^[38][^39].

📝 Curator's Note: The most important lesson to learn from the hantavirus incident should not be "rats are scary"; the most important lesson should be "rat problems are a side effect of kitchen waste, garbage, and cracks."

8. Controversies

• Publishing Poisoning Locations vs. Causing Panic: The Environment Minister advocates publishing poisoning locations so parents and pet owners can avoid them; the Environmental Protection Bureau worries that publishing locations might instead trigger secondary risks of citizens grabbing poison and privately spraying it, finally compromising with an integrated version of "relative hotspot maps + poison usage information"^[31].
• The Hygiene Imagination of the "Dragon Kingdom": The hantavirus fatality in Dax'an District was jokingly called by netizens the "An Rat Rebellion"^[38]. But the reason the event became news was less about the epidemic expanding and more about the class imagination of "even the Dragon Kingdom has rats" being broken.
• Short-term Poisoning vs. Structural Governance: Opposition councilors criticized the city government for being half a beat slow and should immediately expand rodent control^[34]; ecological groups counter-called on the city government not to go back on the path under election pressure and repeat the Ministry of Agriculture's "Rodent Control Week" mistake^[23]²⁹.

9. So What?

If you are willing to view the rat problem as a mirror, it actually reflects three layers of history of Taipei:

1. 1896: The Japanese Governor-General's Office built Taipei's earliest sewerage, street blocks, and sanitation systems for plague.
2. 1980–2015: The Ministry of Agriculture used 40 years of "Rodent Control Week" poisoning, finally exiting because it poisoned black kites to death.
3. 2026: Due to African Swine Fever, kitchen waste flow across the island changed; Taipei used 130-year-old sewerage to accept the 21st century's new kitchen waste policy.

This is not a story of "rats are the bad guys," but a metabolic problem a city has not solved for 130 years. Next time you see a plump brown rat flash by on Yongkang Street, don't just feel disgust—that is the concrete shape of a century-old city's gaps.

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