page_title: Battle of Tamsui
section_title: Commemoration
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Tamsui / Commemoration
caption_attribution_description: English: The Fu-you kung Matsu temple, Tamsui
context_page_description: The Battle of Tamsui, Danshui, or Hobe was a significant French defeat by the Qing dynasty at Tamsui on Taiwan during the Keelung Campaign of the Sino-French War.
context_section_description: The French defeat at Tamsui on 8 October 1884 was widely publicised in China, and had a far greater effect on national morale than the simultaneous French victories in Tonkin during the Kép Campaign (6–10 October 1884).  A detailed account of the battle by Liu Mingchuan, which absurdly multiplied French casualties, was published in the Peking Gazette in November 1884.  In this report, Liu claimed that 300 French troops had been killed:
  The French fleet being stationed off Taipei, Hobe and other places, the French troops made a vigorous attack on 8 October and landed.  Sun K'ai-hua, provincial commander-in-chief, advanced by different routes to attack them with the forces under his command. Chang Kao-yuan, provincial commander-in-chief, and others also led their divisions against the enemy.  The French troops were repulsed, and again advanced several times, but our troops engaged them at close quarters, Sun K'ai-hua making a direct advance upon them with his men, and beheading the officer bearing the standard, which he captured, besides killing about 300 of the enemy.
  — Davidson, The Island of Formosa, Past and Present
  The Chinese victory is still commemorated in Tamsui. Sun Kaihua owed his victory to the intervention of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, the deified form of the medieval Fujianese shamaness Lin Moniang, revered by the seafaring Chinese and their descendants in Taiwan. On receiving Liu Mingchuan's report of the victory, the Guangxu Emperor observed with satisfaction, "The goddess has been kind to my people and kind to myself".  A wooden commemorative tablet in the Fuyou Temple, a Matsu temple in Tamsui completed in 1796, bears the inscription "Bright Heaven's Blessing" in allusion to the emperor's words.
caption: The Fuyou Temple, Tamsui's temple of Mazu
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