The mosquito plague and how Hong Kong fought it with sprays, kerosene, and mosquito nets
- See a mosquito net in a hotel room now and it’s there for ‘heritage’, but for decades they were a key defence against an annual menace
From early spring, swarming miasmas of ever-present, constantly biting mosquitoes are an inescapable fact of Hong Kong life, especially in the New Territories.
In many locations, early morning and late afternoon outdoor activities become almost unbearable because of these pests, especially during periods of constant high humidity and periodic torrential rainfall.
Seasonal conditions, which vary from year to year, affect the intensity of mosquito breeding and consequent nuisance. Relatively mild winters – increasingly prevalent because of climate change – apparently create optimal conditions for enhanced mosquito proliferation.
Like much else in Hong Kong life, it was ever thus. From literally the first summer of British occupation, in 1841, mosquito nuisance was a well-documented fact in letters, memoirs and early official reports.
After links were conclusively proven between Anopheles mosquito bites and malaria, by British microbiologist Sir Ronald Ross in Calcutta, India, in 1898, efforts to eliminate mosquitoes accelerated across Asia.
Known breeding areas, such as nullahs, were sprayed with newly devised chemicals to destroy larvae; many popular proprietary poisons, such as Shelltox, were by-products of the recently emergent petroleum industry.
Other remedies were less drastic; a tablespoon of household kerosene poured into water tanks formed a surface oil slick, and killed any “wrigglers” lurking below. Surface kerosene evaporated within a few days, and meanwhile, the water remained fit to drink.
Mosquito nets were in near-universal use from the late 19th century; their ubiquity is reflected in their constant presence in period novels, short stories and memoirs.
They were so widespread across the tropics – whether in Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, the Indian subcontinent or elsewhere – that the presence of one became an inevitable visual reference in cinematic representations of torrid-zone life.
Modern tropical design periodically uses mosquito nets to give an atmospheric “heritage” feel to repurposed older hotels, even when air conditioning renders their original function unnecessary.
One Hong Kong memoir even used the mosquito net as part of a title and cover illustration.
In Under The Mosquito Curtain, published in Hong Kong in 1935, she charmingly describes, in short-story form, entertaining aspects of life experienced during her time in the British colony, and also referenced the mosquito net – often alternatively termed a mosquito curtain – in her compilation’s title.
Other classic works mention mosquito nets, and the insect nuisances they attempted to repel – often with limited effect.
“Every errand became an expedition, each expedition became an ordeal. Swarms of bugs emerged; small green ones swam on drinking water, and spiders four inches across crawled on the walls.
“The famous Chungking mosquitoes came, and Americans claimed the mosquitoes worked in threes; two lifted the mosquito net, while the third zoomed in for the kill.”
Just before dawn in the New Territories, when Hong Kong’s mosquito squadrons emerge after a too-brief respite in search of fresh blood to imbibe, White and Jacoby’s sleepless nights in the beleaguered Nationalist capital loom closer with every balefully droning buzz.
