09 Daqiao Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (former site of Fangxi Church)
In 1884, when xenophobia during the Sino-French War led to the destruction of the first church in Dalongdong, Mackay used 10,000 taels of Mexican silver in war reparations from the Qing government to build four stone-spired churches in Bangka (Wanhua), Xindian, Xikou (Songshan), and Fangxi (present-day Dihua Street). The Fangxi Church was completed in 1886 and had a plastered façade, decorative motifs of the burning bush, and the inscription “burning but not consumed”. It was once praised as Mackay’s most beautiful creation.
However, ongoing development of the region and a surge in numbers of the faithful meant that this beautiful church was replaced in 1914 by a new church located in Dadaocheng and funded solely by tea merchant and church member Lee Chun-sheng. The congregation relocated to the new site and the original Fangxi Church was then rented to the Japanese Governor-General’s Office as a Japanese language school and later sublet to a pastry company, who used the site to run a factory. The building suffered damage during the war and years of neglect and its roof eventually collapsed, leaving it a ruin. It wasn’t until 1956 that the efforts of elders Yu Yueshu and Chen Qixian led to the church being restored and renamed Daqiao Church.
Although the reconstructed Daqiao Church does not resemble the original, the northern building and the exterior wall made of Qilian rock are original structures from Mackay’s time. On the southern side, one can see imitation Roman columns and balustrades built using washed-stone techniques from the pastry factory era, as well as decorative brickwork made of exposed red bricks. After a heritage review, in 2021 Daqiao Church was officially registered as a historic building, making it the only surviving physical site in Taipei that directly testifies to Mackay’s legacy.
