Amidst the droves of foreigners who have come here to study Chinese, is a very tiny group of foreigners who are students of another kind. A few foreigners come to Taiwan to study Buddhism, while others come to study martial arts.
For Buddhism, Taiwan can be a very serious place to study, as it's the closest you can get to studying with the Dalai Lama. Supposedly, the guy who was the second in command, had a falling out with the Dalai Lama and came to Taiwan. And I believe the person teaching here now is either that guy or his first disciple. To be honest I don't know for sure, and I have only ever heard this story from foreigners, never a Taiwanese. So I'm highly skeptical. However true or not, (probably not) this story has enough weight with foreigners that it brings them here to study Buddhism.
Occasionally you will also see some foreigners in a karate gi. To be honest though, I don't know how prominent Taiwan is as a place to learn kung fu. Apparently there were some pretty respected teachers before, but they left for more money and fame in other countries around the world. In fact if you want to learn kung fu, the best teacher is supposed to be a guy in Korea who fled China many years ago. Granted I've only ever heard this story from those foreigners who studied under this teacher in Korea.
The picture above is actually a very rare sight. While it's common to see old ladies dancing in the park, it's very uncommon to see anybody practicing martial arts. Here is a picture of what could appear as some high school students practicing wushu. However I really think that they were just practicing for some dance show, and decided to incorporate some wushu into it. For the most part the study of martial arts is dead in Taiwan.
