FFF&C's Awesome Adventures in Taiwan: Danshui / Tamsui

Taipei is located on the Danshui River ( 淡水河), and Danshui is a city near the mouth of the river. In olden times, Danshui was basically the main coastal trading port for Taipei, although originally the Danshui River was navigable, and small ocean-going vessels could travel all the way up the river to Taipei to trade in tea and camphor. The river is now silted-up, and I don't think I've seen anything bigger than a dragon boat beyond the river mouth itself.

Given its location at the mouth of the river, Danshui has long had strategic military value, and was the entry-point for a number of expeditions by European powers. As a result, one of the key landmarks in Danshui today is Fort San Domingo, called 紅毛城 or "red hair fort" in Chinese - "the fort of the red haired people". The original fort was made of wood and was built by the Spanish in 1629. Wikipedia tells me that the original fort was stormed and burnt by locals, then the replacement stone fort was demolished by the Spanish themselves after they were beaten by the Dutch at nearby Jilung. The Dutch built a new fort on the site, and then built the current structure in 1644 - quite remarkable to think that the current building is over 350 years old. The British took over the fort from the Qing Goverment following the Opium Wars, and held it until 1980 - some eight years after breaking-off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China.

The trek from Taipei out to Danshui used to be a fairly major undertaking, with a long bus trip, but now there is a Mass Rapid Transit station right in the middle of Danshui, and it has become a lot closer to Taipei. The new MRT station at Danshui has been built with red brick, in a style to echo Fort San Domingo.

From the MRT station we walked along the waterfront out towards the river mouth. In the last twenty years the authorities have clearly put a lot of money into developing the water-front parks, and there is a line of restaurants, cafes, shops and amusement arcades. To keep people walking we had to make commitments to visit the amusement arcades on the way back, and in particular to try-out the BB-gun shooting galleries.

One thing that was interesting in Danshui was to see the impact made there by George MacKay, a Canadian Presbyterian Missionary based in northern Taiwan from around 1870 until his death in 1901. MacKay had first entered my consciousness in the name of one of the major hospitals in Taipei, the 馬偕紀念醫院, which I now know to mean the "MacKay Memorial Hospital". Everyone calls it "馬偕醫院" or "Majie Hospital", using MacKay's Chinese name. While it perhaps should have been obvious to me that "Majie" was a phonetic transcription of a Western name, it was quite a while before I realised this, and even then I wasn't aware of who exactly MacKay was. Subsequently I stumbled over old black-and-white photos of "Majie" conducting an open-air dental clinic, and started to join the dots.

MacKay appears to have been an incredible ball of energy, and established churches, hospitals and schools right across northern Taiwan. He married a Taiwanese wife, and by all accounts he spoke fluent Taiwanese. While the legacy of missionaries in China generally is complex, the affection for MacKay in Taiwan, and in Danshui in particular, seems fairly unambiguous.

In Danshui today there are prominent statues to MacKay, and his house and first school have all been lovingly preserved.

A photo of George MacKay (with pith-helmet and longflowing beard) conducting an open-air dental clinic. The man in the straw hat is a local assistant. At far left is a Formosan Aborigine - apparently a lot of MacKay's patients and converts were lowlands aborigines.

I've tracked-down a copy of MacKay's book From Far Formosa - the Island, its People and Missions. Despite the fact that MacKay had a Doctorate in Divinity he appears to have been more of a man of action than a writer, and I think the book is heavily ghost-written by the "editor", provided by the Presbyterian Church to capture MacKay's story for posterity. The constant reference to "heathens" is amusing, but perhaps not surprising for the time. Starting from zero knowledge of Chinese, MacKay (or perhaps his editor on his behalf) describes himself as having "mastered" the eight tones of Taiwanese in three weeks. My experience is that for an adult who has grown-up outside an environment of tonal languages, it would take much, much longer than three weeks before you could be said to have "mastered" any tones, let alone eight of them.

After a kilometre or so of walking along the river's edge, we headed inland and up the hill to Fort San Domingo. There was a high school group touring the buildings at the same time as us, so we were able to listen-in to the talk that they received on the history of the fort. The presenter emphasised the role of the building as a symbol of the shame that had been inflicted on China by foreigners, and the pride in having the ROC flag flying over it today. Amusingly, she also emphasised the shamelessness of the British in claiming the fort following the Opium Wars, and then even greater shamelessness in holding on to the fort following the end of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the ROC in 1972. The building was actually occupied and maintained by the Australian government for a period after the UK pulled-out.

Of note for me was the fact that one of the British consuls to be housed at Fort San Domingo was Herbert Giles, one of the inventors of the Wade-Giles system of romanisation of Chinese. Obviously there is a challenge in capturing Chinese sounds with the Latin writing system, which has led to a range of competing transcription systems. While the Mainland has long used the Hanyu pinyin system, the ROC has resisted that (presumably because it was an invention of the Communist Bandits), and continued to use a range of inconsistent systems, although I think Wade-Giles was the official transcription system. Interestingly, when we visited the National Palace Museum there was a notice saying that they were in the process of converting all of their labelling from the Wade-Giles system to Hanyu Pinyin, finally acknowledging the logic and simplicity and (more or less) intuitiveness of the Mainland system. Anyway, the key point is that Mr Giles is a star in the Sinological hagiography, and it was an unexpected bonus to find that he had been based in Danshui for several years.

On the way back to the MRT station we stopped at a BB-gun shooting gallery where the owner took pity on our general lack of co-ordination and taught us how to be more effective at blowing away innocent balloons. The BB-guns were just low-powered air pistols, but seeing as they were made to look like a Colt 45, you can imagine that the younger members of the group were quite thrilled at getting to play with firearms.

A view of Guanyin Mountain from the river's edge at Danshui. It is called "Guanyin Mountain" because it supposedly resembles the form of the reclining Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin.

An excited foreign tourist in Danshui.

A view of Fort San Domingo.

Fort San Domingo - detail from basement level. It's interesting that the construction is sandstone, which doesn't seem to be common in the area.

A sculpture in the courtyard outside the basement at Fort San Domingo. I am assuming he is supposed to be Dutch. One has to admire his taste in board shorts.

A view from inside the cells in the basement of Fort San Domingo, looking back towards the consular residence. The cells were used for administering extra-territorial justice to British citizens.

A detail of the terra cotta tiles on an outbuilding to Fort San Domingo.

The red bricks of the facade on the fort.

The consular residence at Fort San Domingo.

Antique iron cannons at Fort San Domingo.

An inscription on one of the cannons, either indicating where it was made, or where it was made for - in this case 艋舺 or Mengjia / Monga, the old name for the riverside settlement and trading port in Taipei, in what is modern-dayWanhua.