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 ...
An exploration of San Francisco Chinatown typically NOT covered by tours