Just down the road from St. John’s University, in the northern part of Tamsui Town, there’s a new light rail, called the Danhai Light Rail Transit. It opened last December, kind of circuiting around Tamsui – it’s not very fast, but it’s comfortable and I use it often, for cutting off Tamsui when I’m coming back from Taipei City…

This month one of the trains has been decorated to commemorate the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Tamsui, part of the Sino-French War. This is the first train on this line to be themed in this way; let’s hope there’s many more to come – cos Tamsui has a whole lot of history worth commemorating!

“The war arose from a dispute between the Qing and the French over control of Tonkin (northern Vietnam). France launched an attack on Keelung and Hobe (Tamsui) in a bid to capture northern Taiwan and extract concessions from the Qing Imperial Court. Though Keelung was captured by the French, Qing defenders managed to hold the Tamsui River mouth and prevent French warships from sailing directly into Taipei. The war started in August 1884 and ran until the French withdrawal in June 1885.”

The train is decorated on the outside, and inside at each end too, to let you imagine you’re really on one of the ships going into battle….

Completely unrelated to the Battle of Tamsui, there’s plenty of beautiful art work on each station, and a few months ago, we spent 2 whole afternoons getting off at every stop, taking photos and getting back on again. The trains run every 15 minutes, currently between Hongshulin and Kanding. The views are good too – these photos were taken this afternoon…

For a full account of the Battle of Tamsui, check out the Wikipedia entry here, there’s lots to learn!