When the French rebuilt Hanoi as a modern city in the early 1900s, they built wide avenues and sewers in the French quarter but not in the native quarter. This caused a bubonic plague outbreak in 1903, as the rat-infested sewers of the French quarter allowed rats to breed and spread the disease throughout Hanoi. In response, the French implemented a rat catching program using Vietnamese workers, but it was ineffective as the rat catchers began clipping tails and re-releasing rats to repeatedly claim the bounty, and some even raised rats to profit from the scheme.

2. • When the French set about creating a
modern Vietnam, they decided to
rebuild Hanoi.
• Latest ideas about architecture were
employed to build the new and modern
city.

3. Some buildings of modern Hanoi

7. • In 1903 modern part of Hanoi was struck by
bubonic plague.
• The French part of Hanoi was built as a beautiful
and clean city with wide avenues and a well-laid-
out sewer system, while the native quarter was
not provided with any modern facilities.
• The refuse from the old city drained straight out
into the river or, during heavy rains or floods,
overflowed into the streets.

8. • Thus what was installed to create a hygienic
environment in the French city became the
cause of the plague.
• The large sewers in the modern part of the
city, a symbol of modernity, were an ideal and
protected breeding ground for rats.
• The sewers also served as a great transport
system, allowing the rats to move around the
city without any problem. And rats began to
enter the well-cared-for homes of the French
through the sewage pipes.

9. • To stem this invasion, a rat hunt was started in
1902.
• The French hired Vietnamese workers and paid
them for each rat they caught.
• on 30 May, for instance, 20,000 were caught but
still there seemed to be no end.
• Those who did the dirty work of entering sewers
found that if they came together they could
negotiate a higher bounty.
• They also discovered innovative ways to profit
from this situation.

10. • The bounty was paid when a tail was given as
proof that a rat had been killed.
• So the rat-catchers took to just clipping the
tails and releasing the rats, so that the process
could be repeated, over and over again. Some
people, in fact, began raising rats to earn a
bounty.