Heritage Walking
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Tamsui Old Street and Fort San Domingo: River, Trade and Missions

An outdoor walk through Tamsui, excluding building interiors. It runs from the riverside facing Guanyin Mountain along the old merchant street to the sea goddess's temple, then Mackay's landing place, church and college, the customs commissioner's white house, the red fort and the old customs wharf. Nine stops, about 60 minutes of walking and listening.

This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.

At ~60 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Tamsui makes a full-day itinerary.

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All Taiwan walking tours · All 163 routes

Tamsui, Taiwan · ~60 min · 1.9 km · 9 stops

Stops on this walk

1. Tamsui Riverside

A river mouth that opened the Taipei basin to settlers, then to foreign ships.

Stand at the railing and look across the water. The broad, wooded mountain on the far bank is Guanyin Mountain, about 616 meters high. The North Coast and Guanyinshan National Scenic Area office says the name comes from its outline, which resembles the reclining figure of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy. The river in front of you is the Tamsui, and it runs on to the sea. For settlers crossing from mainland China in the Qing era, this river was the gateway into the Taipei basin. Ships came in here and sailed on upriver. The far bank had the advantage first. Taiwan's national heritage record explains that in the early Qing period the shipping channel ran along the south shore. So the town of Bali over there grew faster. Late in the eighteenth century the channel shifted, and the north bank, where you are standing, began to prosper. The town on this side was called Hobe. Under treaties signed with Britain and France in 1858 and 1860, Tamsui was opened to foreign trade. A customs house began collecting duties in 1862. Merchant houses, consuls and missionaries followed the ships. The river also brought war. In October 1884, during the Sino-French War, French warships shelled the batteries guarding the river mouth. On the eighth of October about six hundred French troops landed on Shalun Beach. Qing troops drove them back in less than two hours. The town's heritage museum calls it one of the great events in Tamsui's history. In the Japanese era, Keelung on the north-east coast replaced Tamsui as the main port, and the trade here faded. The buildings it left behind still line this shore.

The riverside promenade is shared with cyclists, so keep to the walking side. Boats to Bali and Fisherman's Wharf leave from piers along this bank, on their own schedules.

2. Zhongzheng Road Old Street

The old Hobe Street, a row of deep, narrow merchant houses now given over to food.

Look along the street at the row of narrow shopfronts. Many of the buildings are deep and narrow and joined wall to wall, with the shop at street level. Most people call this the Old Street. The city tourism office notes that Chongjian Street, on the slope, developed first, and still has old wooden and brick houses. A parallel street grew up as a rice market. It was renamed Qingshui Street after the temple of the Qingshui Patriarch was built there. Today the street is mostly about food. The dish Tamsui is known for is a-gei. The tourism office explains that the name comes from part of the Japanese word for fried tofu. A block of fried tofu is hollowed out and filled with glass noodles, sealed with fish paste and steamed, then served with a sweet chili sauce. Fish balls and the small, dark iron eggs are the other local snacks you will see. Above the shop signs, some upper floors still keep old facades, with arched windows and decorated parapets, behind the modern boards.

Shops keep their own hours. Vehicles still use the road, so watch behind you before you stop to look up.

3. Fuyou Temple

The sea goddess's temple of 1796, around which the old port town grew.

Look at the temple front, with its stone pillars, carved stone panels and the dragons on the roof ridge. This is Fuyou Temple, dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess who protects sailors and fishermen. People in Tamsui often just call it the Mazu temple. It was completed in 1796. The national heritage record notes that the stone columns of the front porch carry the date of the first year of the Jiaqing reign, which is 1796. There may have been a simpler shrine to Mazu here before that, but the details are lost. It is one of the oldest temples in Tamsui. A sea goddess at the heart of a river port is no accident. The city tourism office describes this temple as the center around which old Tamsui grew. One couplet at the gate asks who will cross the boundless sea of suffering to reach the far shore at Meizhou, Mazu's home island. The tourism office reads it as a memory of the hard crossing settlers made from the mainland. Stone lions guard the door, their heads polished smooth. The tourism office suggests they may once have been ballast stones carried in ships, and people rub them for protection. If you go inside, look for two things. A stone tablet set into the front hall wall records the building of a watchtower lighthouse to guide ships into the river mouth. In the main hall hangs a plaque of four characters. Temple tradition says the Guangxu Emperor granted it after Mazu was believed to have helped defend Tamsui against the French in 1884. Behind the front hall, a pavilion serves both as a place of worship and as a stage where performances are offered to the goddess.

Entry is free and the temple opens from early morning into the evening. It is an active place of worship, so step around people praying, do not cross in front of the altar, and ask before photographing anyone.

4. Mackay's Landing Place

Where a Canadian missionary stepped ashore in 1872 and began his work in northern Taiwan.

Look at the bronze figure by the river. A man kneels on the ground holding a Bible, and beside him lies a small boat. The city tourism office describes this spot, behind the post office, as the place where George Leslie Mackay came ashore, and the statue shows that moment. Mackay was a Canadian Presbyterian missionary. He reached southern Taiwan in 1871. English Presbyterians were already working in the south, but the crowded north had no missionaries at all, so he chose the north. On the ninth of March 1872 he landed at Tamsui. Northern Taiwan became the main base of his work for the rest of his life. He began in a rented house that served as his home, his chapel and his clinic. He learned the local Hokkien language and baptized his first converts in 1873. Malaria was common in the north, and many people suffered from ulcers on their legs. Mackay treated them, and his name spread. He also pulled teeth wherever he went. According to Mackay Memorial Hospital, his diary suggests that he extracted more than twenty-one thousand teeth in Taiwan. The river explains why he started here. Tamsui was a treaty port with foreign ships and merchants. From this shore he travelled constantly, preaching in villages and training local students to lead the churches he founded. He died in Tamsui on the second of June 1901, of throat cancer. He was buried in what had been the foreign cemetery, now in the grounds of Tamkang High School. The city tourism office notes that, at his wish, a wall separates his grave from the foreigners' graves, to show that he counted himself Taiwanese.

The promenade here is open at all hours. Mackay's grave is inside a school, and the tourism office says visits need a reservation through Tamkang High School.

5. Tamsui Church & Mackay Hospital 淡水禮拜堂

A red brick church designed by Mackay's son, beside the clinic where his father healed.

Look up at the red brick church with its bell tower and pointed arches. This is the Tamsui Presbyterian Church, the congregation Mackay founded in 1872. The building you see was completed in 1933. It is built in a Gothic Revival style. Look at the brickwork, laid in English bond, the buttresses along the walls and the small pinnacles at the corners of the tower. The church was designed by Mackay's son, George William Mackay, and he supervised the work himself. Church members and students gave money, and he obtained most of the funds from the mother church in Canada. Work began in 1932. The stained glass carries Bible scenes. The city tourism office lists the Trinity on the front window, and on the bell tower the five loaves and two fish and the prayer in Gethsemane. Now look at the low building just beside it, with an arched doorway and a double flight of steps. That is the Hobe Mackay Hospital. Mackay bought the land in March 1879 and opened the clinic that September. It was the base of his medical work. The heritage record describes a mix of East and West. The walls are traditional mud brick, painted to look like masonry, behind a Western-style doorway and stair. After Mackay's death, the medical work moved to Taipei in 1912, where it grew into today's Mackay Memorial Hospital. The old clinic became a bookshop, a teachers' residence and a meeting room. Today it holds a small exhibition on the church's history, and a café.

The church is a working congregation. Sunday belongs to worship, and the doors are not always open to visitors, so enjoy it from the street unless you are invited in. The old hospital opens on a limited timetable, usually afternoons, and is closed on Mondays.

6. The Little White House

The Qing customs commissioner's house, built when foreigners ran China's customs.

Below the road, among the trees, stands a white building with a row of round arches along its front. This is the former residence of the Qing customs commissioner at Tamsui. Locals call it the Little White House, because it was painted white inside and out. When Tamsui opened as a treaty port, customs duties were first collected in 1862 by Chinese officials. From 1863 foreigners were appointed to run the customs here, and in practice they controlled its administration and revenue. As more foreign officers arrived, the customs service began building a house for its commissioner in 1866. In 1875 it bought the land beside it for two more houses. The design suits the climate. The national heritage record lists the marks of a colonial-style house. It stands on a brick and stone base raised about a meter, with vents to keep the floor dry. A veranda runs around it behind the arches, eleven on the side facing the river and four on each end. Every door and window has wooden louvered shutters, and the hipped roof carries a chimney. The house lived through the town's upheavals. During the French attack of 1884 one of the residences here was destroyed. When Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, the last Qing customs commissioner, Morse, disputed who owned the customs property, and Japan simply took it. After the Second World War another house was pulled down. The heritage register says this is the surviving building from that group of residences. The building was listed as a heritage site in 1997 and restored in 2002. Inside, an exhibition covers the house and old photographs of Tamsui.

Entry is paid. One ticket from the Tamsui Historical Museum covers this house, the red fort and the Hobe Fort on the same day. The museum closes on the first Monday of each month, and ticket sales stop thirty minutes before closing.

7. Oxford College

Mackay's school of 1882, paid for by his Canadian home county and roofed with pagoda spires.

The building stands inside the university campus. You can approach it only when the campus is open to visitors. Look at the long, low brick building with a tiled roof and small spires along the ridge. The stone lintel over the door reads Oxford College 1882, beside its Chinese name. This is the school Mackay built. For his first years in Tamsui, Mackay taught in the open air, by the roadside, under banyan trees, beside streams and on the beach. On his first home leave in 1880 he told people in his home county of Oxford, in Canada, about his work. A local newspaper took up the cause, and they raised 6,215 dollars for a proper school. Mackay came back, bought this land, and designed and supervised the building himself. It opened in 1882, and he named it after the county that paid for it. Look at the roof. The little spires recall the pinnacles of a Western church, but they are shaped like Chinese pagodas. The national heritage record says this was meant to ease local feelings about a foreign building. The bricks and tiles were shipped from Xiamen across the strait. Instead of cement, the mortar mixed sticky rice, brown sugar, lime and sand. Students studied theology and the Bible, but also history and ethics, astronomy, geography, geology, botany and zoology, and medicine with clinical practice. The heritage record calls it the first new-style school in Taiwan. It became the cradle of three schools. Taiwan Theological College, Tamkang High School, and Aletheia University all trace their beginnings here.

This is a working university campus, so keep voices down near classrooms. The building holds an exhibition about Mackay, open on limited days and hours, and sometimes by reservation only. Viewing from outside is always possible when the campus is open.

8. Fort San Domingo (Hongmaocheng) 紅毛城

A fort used by the Spanish, the Dutch, the Qing and the British, and painted red by the last.

Look at the small stone gate in front of you, with the characters for South Gate carved above the arch. Beyond it, up the slope, stands the red fort that the Chinese call Hongmaocheng, the fort of the red-haired people. The city's tourism guide describes it as one of Taiwan's surviving historic buildings. The Spanish came first. In the late 1620s they built a fort on this hill above the river mouth and called it Santo Domingo. In 1642 the Dutch drove them out, and the Spanish wrecked the fort as they left. In 1644 the Dutch built a stronger fort, named after Antonio van Diemen, their governor-general in Asia. At the time the Han Chinese called the Dutch red-haired barbarians, and the fort's name comes from them. In 1724 a Qing official, Wang Qian, added an outer wall with four gates. The heritage register describes this as the only surviving gate from the four added in 1724. It also calls it the only Chinese-style structure in the grounds. It is built of stone blocks from Guanyin Mountain across the river. In 1867 Britain took the fort on a permanent lease, and the next year made it the British consulate. The British turned the upper floor into offices and used the ground floor as a jail, with four cells for British prisoners. They also painted the walls red. Originally they were grayish white. In 1891 they built the red brick consul's residence beside it, with the letters VR, for Queen Victoria, set into its walls. The consulate closed during the Second World War and reopened after it. Later the fort passed through Australian and American custody before returning to the Republic of China in 1980. It opened to the public at the end of 1984.

The grounds and buildings are paid entry. The same ticket covers the Little White House and the Hobe Fort on the same day. Opening hours are longer at weekends, and the museum closes on the first Monday of each month. A side gate links the grounds with the university campus during campus hours.

9. Tamsui Customs Wharf

A stone quay of the treaty port, where foreign-run customs met the ships.

Look at the stone quay along the river's edge. It runs for about one hundred and fifty meters in three sections, built of closely fitted Guanyin stone and Qilian stone. This is the Tamsui Customs Wharf, where the trade of the treaty port actually came ashore. Customs collection began in 1862, and the wharf area grew along the riverbank of the old Hobe Street. The city tourism office notes that the Qing government made a British official, Horatio Lay, its Inspector General of Customs. That put customs administration in foreign hands. That makes this quiet quay a piece of evidence for the foreign pressure on northern Taiwan at the end of the Qing era. Look at the details of the quay. The heritage record describes square mooring posts and wedge-shaped stone boarding steps on the east section. The middle section is paved with Qilian stone, and on the west a boarding ramp slopes down to the water. Drainage outlets pierce the walls. The wharf grounds contain a two-story Western-style building and two brick warehouses. After 1895 the Japanese filled land here and built an inspection station along the bank, and the warehouses date from about 1925 to 1930. After the war the military took over this part of the wharf. It was designated a heritage site in 2000, and later restored and opened to visitors. Look upstream and you can see the Guandu Bridge in the distance. Downstream, the river widens toward its mouth and the sea.

The outdoor park is open every day, and the buildings follow the museum's hours. Keep back from the edge of the quay, and keep children close to you.