On June 30, 2000, the Town of Tamsui, Republic of China in Taiwan, formally twinned with the County of Oxford. (Tamsui is a large city on the north coast of the island of Taiwan; the name is pronounced "domshway".)

This occurred after several years of planning and with great ceremony on the lawns of the County Court House. At that time Tamsui officials presented the County with a gingko tree, planted to the east of the Court House.

The next day at the Embro Highland games the mayor of Tamsui presented the Mayor of Zorra Township with an elaborately ornate vase as a gift to the people of Zorra from the people of Tamsui. The tug of war teams from the high school competed against Zorra's own.

In March 2001 the Zorra girls team and County and Township officials journeyed to Tamsui to repay the visit and were treated with astonishing generosity and warmth.

On June 2 2001 our Taiwanese friends were back in Embro again. For those who were there, the reason was made apparent for all the attention Taiwan has been lavishing upon Oxford. June 2 2001 was 100 years to the day from the death of the Reverend George Leslie Mackay.

Mackay was a "Zorra boy" raised on "porridge and catechism". He was the first China missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and Zorra Township and Oxford County were the geographical centre of the China mission movement of southwestern Ontario throughout the latter half of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. (The Scots of Oxford and Grey Counties later so predominated in North Honan province in mainland China that one James Hattie legally changed his name to MacHattie.)

Upon arrival in the Treaty Port of Tamsui in 1872, where he was known as the Black-Bearded Barbarian, Mackay learned Taiwanese in the company of herdboys. After some months he was conversant enough that he had a core group of adherents and married a local woman in 1878. He regularly preceded his evangelism with sessions of tooth extraction. His practice of healing the sick as a means to evangelism pioneered later practice throughout China.

In 1880 he and "Minnie" returned to Oxford County on furlough. The editor of the Sentinel Review, the Woodstock paper, mentioned Mackay's goal of establishing a school for the training of Chinese missionaries so that the Church in Taiwan and later in Honan would become self-supporting. Mackay reckoned the cost at $4,000, and the editor suggested that it would be a worthy cause for the citizens of Oxford County to sponsor.

On the evening of 11 October 1881 a non-denominational meeting was held at Canada Methodist church in Woodstock with some 1,500 lay and 30 to 40 clergymen in attendance from Woodstock, Brooksdale, Embro and Harrington in Oxford County, Seaforth, Brucedale, Paris, Ayr and Toronto; others sent messages of support from Ingersoll and Halifax. All remarked at the unity of purpose among the sects represented. The Premier of Ontario, Sir Oliver Mowat, also spoke in support of the endeavour. A total of $6,215.00 was given to Dr. Mackay (who spoke against the head tax), and it was announced that the school would be called "Oxford College in Formosa".

The Mackays returned to the island to establish and equip the school with Bibles and scientific teaching equipment for courses in history, ethics and the natural sciences and medicine. In 1883, decades ahead of his time, he established a girls' residential high school and, by 1895, 60 chapels, each with a native preacher and dispensary. Oxford College expanded into new educational institutions in the decades after his death, and his original hospital, now used as a museum, was succeeded with a multi-storey general hospital, the Mackay Memorial Hospital.

Oxford College continues to flourish in the 21st century, now a university, the legacy of the most successful of the China missions. The original school still exists, and now houses the archives of the work that Mackay began. A century after his death he remains a hero in his adopted land.