Tamsui

February 15, 2020

The end of the week was quite eventful. Frances, our resident Yale alumni organiser, planned a Valentine’s – or rather Friendentine’s – evening at KTV, which was well attended. My un-transposed renditions of Teresa Teng were, if I may say so myself, a source of general wonderment, though I really ought to practice my upper range better if I am to join the Russian Chorus on its next gig.

I was thinking about hopping on the train in the morning and heading to Jilong, but it was already so late by the time I headed back from KTV that I did not think I would wake up early enough to make the best of my day there. Instead, I decided I would take the metro up to Tamsui for a half-day trip.

Tamsui is one of the most historical places in northern Taiwan, its first settlement by non-indigenous people dating back to the seventeenth century, when the Spanish expanded their dominion there from Jilong. Santo Domingo, the fort they built in Tamsui, was later taken over by the Dutch and subsequently by the Qing. In the nineteenth century, it served as the British consulate, and it is this later history that the current museum aims to emulate.

First things first though. The Tamsui station is the last station on the very long red line. It is honestly quite amazing that as distant a place as Tamsui, almost an hour away from the metro station closest to where I live, is still serviced by the same metro line. Right outside the station is a park and a very pleasant seafront with beautiful views of Guanyin mountain across a short stretch of sea. It was still quite early, around nine o’clock or nine thirty, when I arrived, so the waterfront was completely abandoned. The same was not true, however, of the market streets, which were bustling with life as local residents haggled over vegetables and various seafood for their weekend cooking.

I saw several traditional Chinese temples, after which I continued to the part of the city I had read so much about: Mackay Street, named in honour of the Canadian missionary, and the site of one of the oldest hospital buildings on the island. As I discovered, the street branches out from a small plaza with a bust of George Mackay, and continues to a red brick European-style church. From there, it was not far to the Tamsui Customs Wharf, and then to Fort Santo Domingo. With a visit to the nearby Aletheia University, I had checked off all items on my itinerary. The university was in fact founded as Oxford College in honour of Mackay’s home county in Canada, which had raised over six thousand dollars for the purpose of establishing an institution of higher learning in Taiwan. Founded by the missionary himself, it is the oldest university in Taiwan.