Rediscovering Keelung's killing fields

For nearly 118 years, much of the legacy of the numerous battles for Keelung that took place during the Sino-French War of 1884-1885 has lay undisturbed. But neglected remnants of the conflict, long buried under dense undergrowth and tonnes of earth throughout the city's mountainous hinterland, have recently been reappearing.

"The city's environs are littered with history. Every time we get heavy rains more reminders of the conflict appear," explained Dai Chi-yi (戴基益) of Keelung's Penglai Shanshui Historical Society (蓬萊 山水文史協會). "But nobody with any say as to how the city is administered seems to either know about it or care about it."

While many of those who died in the service of France during the conflict are remembered in a small and well-kept graveyard adjacent to the ruins of Ershawan Fort (二砂灣), the same is not true of their Chinese counterparts who died defending Keelung. This is something that Dai and the other amateur historians who spend their weekends hiking through the undergrowth around Keelung's searching for remnants of Taiwan's past aim to change.

"It's such a waste. Here we have all this history sitting there, but without the backing of cultural bureaus there's no way any of it can be made public," explained the historical society's Alan Liu (劉欽仁). "Much of it is scattered across the mountains and years of neglect and a lack of pathways mean that making such places accessible to the public is quite a big job."

Although based in the northern port city, members of the Penglai Historical Society have been responsible for the discovery of ancient military ruins at Chinshan (金山) and Wanli (萬里) in Taipei County and at a site in Ilan County. Long since considered a futile military venture by historians, the Sino-French war saw colonial French forces clashing with their Ching Dynasty rivals over control of the province of Tongkin in the kingdom of Annam in what is now Vietnam.

While much of the fighting took place in what is today Vietnam, French troops occupied parts of Fujian and Taiwan during the conflict. By late 1884, Taiwan was effectively cut off from the Chinese mainland with control of the northern port towns of Keelung and Tamsui ceded to the French in October of that year. The bloody yearlong conflict cost the lives of 10,000 thousand Chinese and roughly 2,100 French troops.

The many skirmishes that took place in the battle for Keelung, as the French wrestled control of it from Ching troops hill-by-hill, warrant little more than a passing paragraph in most history books. However, reminders of one particular killing field have become hard to ignore.

Along the verges of Hsinglung Road (興隆路) at the foot of Yuemei Mountain (月眉山), unearthed bones and other remnants of the long-forgotten conflict are now an all-too-common a sight. The result of flooding and minor landslides, some rather shocking aspects of one battle in particular are reappearing at an alarming rate.

"The remains have simply been ignored. No one has bothered to rebury them on the mountainside or even erect a marker," explained Dai, pointing to part of a human cranium jutting out if the soft mud. "It's pretty sad really how we can quite literally leave our own history scattered along the roadside like trash."

According to historical records, roughly 150 French colonial troops died attempting to cross the Keelung River at the base of Yuemei Mountain in 1884. Ching causalities were predictably higher, with the total number of Chinese dead estimated at somewhere in the region of 500.