China's Shaolin Temple to help Taiwan open martial arts school

May 19, 2011, 23:19 GMT

Taipei - China's Shaolin Temple, which trains the famous fighting monks, will help Taiwan open a martial arts school, press reports said Friday.

Construction of the Fuhsing Martial Arts School, in Miaoli County, western Taiwan, began Thursday. The school will open in September when the first-stage construction is completed, the China Times and Liberty Times said.

The school will cover 20 hectares and cost 600 million Taiwan dollars (20 million US dollars) to build. It will be a boarding school eventually recruiting more than 1,000 primary and high school students, the two dailies said.

The students will learn Chinese, English, mathematics and martial arts.

Miaoli County began sending students to the Shaolin Temple two years ago, so that they could learn martial arts, or kungfu, and become seed teachers at the Miaoli school.

Shaolin Temple will send monks to teach martial arts at the Miaoli school, press reports said.

The school has full backing from Miaoli County Magistrate Liu Cheng-hung.

'It can promote Shaolin Temple's martial arts and boost tourism in Miaoli,' he told reporters.

The Shaolin Temple, in Henan Province, was founded in the 5th century and is one of China's best known Buddhist monasteries, due to its association with marital arts.

In the 1990s, the temple began to open kung fu schools in China and send its monks on overseas performance tours.

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