Mazu 媽祖, Guardian Goddess of the Sailors and Travelers, and Her TWO Temples in SF Chinatown

Most Chinatown tours will likely mention the Tin How Temple on Waverly Pl as the oldest taoist temple in the US, first founded in 1852, and rebuilt in 1910 after the 1906 earthquake. 

However, what you probably will NOT know is there is a second temple for the same goddess in Chinatown in an alley two blocks to the south, on Beckett. But let's first discuss who she is. 

Mazu, also spelled Ma-tsu, is a Chinese sea goddess who is deified form of a real woman by the name of Lin Mo. The deified form Mazu 媽祖 literally means mother-ancestor (or grandma/granny), also goes by a dozen different names, one of which is 天后 (tianhou) which means Queen / Empress of Heaven. 

Little was known about her life in history, as most of her alleged deeds were recorded two centuries after her "return to Heaven". But this is what we pass on today: 

She is believed to have been born around 960AD, and her given name was Mo 默 which stands for silence. It was said that she did not cry during or after her birth for a month, and remained a quiet child until she was 4. Her father was Lin, a fisherman in the province of Fujian. She learned to read early on, and mastered classical texts by age 11. She was alleged to have met a Taoist master and learned many Taoist secrets such as astral walking and forecasting. She also learned how to swim and some healing arts at 15. She soon took up the task of wearing bright outfits and a lantern in bad weather to guide ships home, and help in rescue attempts if ships do end up wrecking. Those who listened to her advice returned home safely with bountiful harvest. 

There were different versions of her end. The more popular version had her lost at sea at the age of 26 in a failed rescue. A different version of her death had her body washed up at what's today Matsu islands, Taiwan (ROC), where local fishermen and magistrate build her a great temple in her honor. It's still there today as the "Matsu Nangan Tianhou Temple". 

After her death, her legend just kept on growing, and the ruling emperor acknowledged her as a goddess, thus adding on more and more titles, and many military victories were even attributed to her intervention. It was during one of these that she was given the title "Empress of Heaven". 

The "original" at 125 Waverly Pl, called Tin How Temple, was brought by the first Chinese immigrants who emigrated from the coastal regions, who felt blessed to have survived the journey and thanked the Empress of Heaven, and build the first temple.

 

The second temple was actually a branch from Taiwan (ROC), first arrived in 1986, then moved to its current location at 30 Beckett St (which is a seldomly traveled alley) a few blocks away in 1996. 

Same goddess, two temples, both in San Francisco Chinatown.