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| How Kung Fu Came To Taiwan |
A History of Taiwanese Martial Arts; description: How did kung fu reach Taiwan? From Dutch-era Chinese settlers and Zheng Chenggong to Qing martial halls and the post-1949 arrival of mainland systems.
From Armed Settlers and Soldiers to Boxing Halls and Traditional Martial Arts
Taiwan today occupies an unusual position in the world of traditional Chinese martial arts.
The island preserves old Southern Chinese systems, village martial traditions, temple-associated martial practices and, following the great migrations of the twentieth century, systems brought from many different regions of mainland China.
But when did Chinese martial arts actually arrive in Taiwan?
At first the answer seems obvious.
Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功), better known in the West as Koxinga, landed in Taiwan with a large Chinese army in 1661. It is therefore tempting to identify his arrival as the beginning of kung fu in Taiwan.
I once made exactly that argument.
After looking more carefully at the historical evidence, however, the situation is considerably more complicated.
The problem begins with the question itself.
There was probably no single moment when "kung fu" arrived in Taiwan.
Chinese people were fighting on the island before Zheng Chenggong arrived. Zheng's soldiers certainly possessed organized military training. During the Qing period, village defense, militias and local martial organizations developed. By the nineteenth century, traditions of martial teachers and boxing halls become increasingly visible. During the Japanese period we find direct documentary evidence of people studying 拳術 (quánshù), martial teachers and local boxing halls. After 1949 another wave of martial artists brought systems from many different regions of China.
Chinese martial culture therefore did not arrive in Taiwan once.
It accumulated in layers.
First, What Do We Mean by "Kung Fu"?
Before trying to find the first kung fu in Taiwan, we have to define what we are looking for.
This is more difficult than it sounds.
Finding a Chinese settler carrying a sword does not prove that he practiced kung fu.
Finding farmers fighting with bamboo poles does not prove the existence of a martial-arts system.
Even finding soldiers performing organized weapons training does not necessarily demonstrate the existence of kung fu in the modern sense.
People have fought throughout human history.
Armies trained soldiers.
Villages organized defense.
Hunters used weapons.
Militias drilled.
Boxers practiced fighting methods.
All of these activities belong to martial history, but historians should be careful about placing all Chinese fighting activity throughout history into the modern category of "kung fu."
For the purposes of this article, it is useful to distinguish at least three levels.
The first is armed activity: people possessing and using weapons in conflict.
The second is organized martial or military training: systematic instruction, drills, formations, weapons practice or militia preparation.
The third is something closer to what we recognize today as a traditional martial art: teachers, students, boxing instruction, a continuing curriculum, martial halls or transmission communities whose practice can continue beyond a single immediate military crisis.
These categories overlap, but they are not identical.
This distinction becomes extremely important when we examine early Taiwan.
Before Large-Scale Han Settlement
Long before substantial Han Chinese settlement, Taiwan was inhabited by Indigenous peoples with their own cultures of hunting, warfare and weapons.
These traditions belong to Taiwan's martial history, but they should not be retrospectively classified as Chinese kung fu.
Chinese fishermen, traders, merchants and other maritime travelers also visited Taiwan before Dutch colonization. Chinese contacts with Indigenous communities existed before the establishment of permanent European colonial government.
But the Han population was still relatively limited.
The situation changed dramatically during the seventeenth century.
The Dutch Period and the Growth of Chinese Settlement
The Dutch East India Company established its colonial presence in southwestern Taiwan in 1624.
The colonial economy required agricultural labor, and the Dutch encouraged migration from the nearby Chinese coast, particularly Fujian.
The Chinese population consequently grew substantially.
Research based on Dutch taxation and migration records estimates a Chinese population of only a few thousand around 1640 but a much larger community by the 1650s.
These people were primarily farmers, laborers, merchants and other settlers.
Did they practice kung fu?
We do not know.
But we do know that some of them fought.
1652: Chinese Settlers Take Up Weapons
One of the earliest secure documentary anchors for Chinese armed activity in Taiwan is the Guo Huaiyi Incident (郭懷一事件) of 1652.
Guo Huaiyi was a Chinese farmer who organized a revolt against Dutch colonial rule.
According to research based on Dutch East India Company records, approximately 5,000 Chinese settlers participated in the uprising.
The Dutch forces opposing them were much smaller but possessed firearms and were supported by Indigenous auxiliaries.
The Chinese rebels were comparatively poorly armed. Surviving accounts describe weapons including bamboo staffs, swords and knives. Other reconstructions mention agricultural implements.
The uprising was crushed with enormous Chinese casualties.
This occurred nine years before Zheng Chenggong landed in Taiwan.
It therefore establishes something important:
Han Chinese settlers were participating in organized armed conflict in Taiwan before Koxinga.
But we must stop there.
Bamboo poles, knives and agricultural implements are evidence of weapons.
They are not evidence of kung fu.
The Guo Huaiyi uprising tells us that Chinese settlers fought. It does not tell us that they belonged to formal boxing traditions, studied organized martial systems or transmitted identifiable styles.
This distinction may seem overly cautious, but it is essential.
Historical evidence should be allowed to tell us what it tells us — and no more.
1661: Zheng Chenggong Brings an Army
Zheng Chenggong represents a completely different level of martial organization.
In 1661 he crossed the Taiwan Strait with approximately 25,000 troops and hundreds of vessels to attack the Dutch colonial position in Taiwan.
These were not farmers suddenly taking up bamboo poles.
They were members of an organized military establishment developed through years of warfare along the southeastern Chinese coast.
After a prolonged siege, the Dutch surrendered Fort Zeelandia in 1662.
The arrival of Zheng's forces therefore represents an enormously important event in Taiwan's martial history.
For the first time, a very large Chinese military organization established itself permanently on the island.
These soldiers necessarily possessed organized military skills.
They trained with the weapons and methods required by their military system. The Zheng regime subsequently maintained military forces and used military-agricultural colonies to support its position in Taiwan.
But here again we must be careful.
Military training is not automatically the same thing as traditional kung fu.
We cannot simply take a seventeenth-century soldier trained in military weapons and formations and declare him a practitioner of a later martial-arts system.
Nor can we presently establish that particular modern Taiwanese styles descend directly from Zheng Chenggong's soldiers simply because their practitioners preserve such traditions.
Zheng therefore did not necessarily "bring kung fu to Taiwan."
What we can establish is more precise:
Zheng Chenggong brought a large, organized Chinese military culture to an island that already contained a substantial Chinese settler population.
That is historically important enough without embellishment.
What About Song Jiang Battle Array?
One tradition frequently connected with Zheng Chenggong is the Song Jiang Battle Array (宋江陣).
Song Jiang formations remain one of the most distinctive elements of Taiwanese folk martial culture, particularly in southern Taiwan.
They combine weapons, coordinated formations, martial performance and community or temple organization.
Popular explanations sometimes connect their origin in Taiwan directly with Zheng Chenggong's military training.
This possibility is part of Taiwanese tradition.
It should not, however, presently be presented as established historical fact.
Taiwanese cultural and government sources preserve several explanations for the origins of Song Jiang Battle Array. Some associate it with Zheng Chenggong. Others connect aspects of its organization with military formations associated with the Ming general Qi Jiguang (戚繼光). Still others emphasize later Qing village defense, local militia and temple culture.
The precise historical origin remains uncertain.
What can be documented much more securely is the later development of Song Jiang formations as part of Taiwanese local community and religious culture.
Therefore the correct historical formulation is:
Tradition sometimes connects Song Jiang Battle Array with Zheng Chenggong, but current evidence does not securely establish that he created or introduced the tradition in the form preserved in Taiwan today.
That does not make the tradition meaningless.
It simply tells us what kind of evidence we possess.
Qing Taiwan: A Different Martial Environment
The Qing conquered Taiwan in 1683.
During the following two centuries, large numbers of migrants continued to arrive, particularly from Fujian and Guangdong.
Taiwan remained a difficult frontier society for much of this period.
Local communities experienced banditry, rebellions, disputes over land and water, and the famous armed conflicts commonly called 械鬥 (xièdòu).
Government security could not always protect every settlement.
Communities therefore had practical reasons to organize themselves.
Local defense organizations, militias, clan networks, temple communities and other forms of collective organization became important features of Taiwanese society.
Martial skills had practical value in this environment.
But even here we should resist calling every armed village organization a "kung fu school."
The more interesting question is:
When do we begin seeing martial practice developing its own continuing social institutions?
By the nineteenth century, the evidence becomes considerably more interesting.
Xiluo Seven K'an and Liu Mingshan
One of Taiwan's most famous local martial traditions developed around Xiluo (西螺) in present-day Yunlin County.
The tradition is commonly known as Xiluo Seven K'an (西螺七崁).
Central to its traditional history is the martial teacher Liu Mingshan (劉明善), commonly remembered as A-Shan Shi (阿善師).
Modern Taiwanese cultural documentation preserves a detailed traditional chronology.
According to this tradition, Liu came from Zhao'an in Fujian. He arrived in Taiwan in 1828, initially living around Damao, and moved to the Xiluo area around 1831.
There, according to local tradition, his martial and medical abilities led community leaders to ask him to teach local residents.
The famous Zhenxing Society (振興社) martial hall subsequently became associated with him and with the development of martial culture throughout the Seven K'an region.
This is important because it looks very different from the Guo Huaiyi uprising.
Here we encounter:
a martial teacher, students, boxing instruction, a martial hall, community transmission and a continuing martial tradition.
This begins to resemble much more closely the social phenomenon we now recognize as traditional kung fu.
However, an important qualification is necessary.
A Note on the Evidence
The Liu Mingshan chronology should presently be treated as local historical tradition rather than completely verified contemporary history.
Taiwan's National Cultural Memory Bank and Yunlin government cultural sources preserve the 1828/1831 chronology, and Liu's association with the Xiluo martial tradition is deeply established in local historical memory.
But the surviving modern accounts depend significantly upon later community histories, field research and oral tradition.
In fact, the National Cultural Memory Bank itself records an important disagreement.
Although Liu Mingshan is traditionally credited with founding Zhenxing Society, fieldwork recorded in the Yunlin County Hakka Martial Hall Cultural Survey suggests that the actual founder of the organization may instead have been Liu's student Cai Qiufeng (蔡秋風, 1841–1916).
That uncertainty is historically valuable.
It demonstrates the difference between:
a traditional founder narrative
and
what surviving evidence can presently establish.
The traditional chronology may ultimately prove substantially correct.
But until earlier documentation is identified, the responsible position is to label it appropriately rather than silently convert tradition into documented fact.
There is also a useful warning about how later stories develop.
One modern account claims Liu came to Taiwan in 1828 partly because of the Taiping Rebellion.
That is chronologically impossible.
The Taiping Rebellion did not begin until 1850.
This does not prove that Liu did not arrive in 1828.
It demonstrates only that later retellings can attach new explanations to an older tradition.
The history therefore has to be reconstructed layer by layer.
The Martial Hall Becomes Important
Whatever the precise details of Liu Mingshan's biography, the broader institution represented by the Taiwanese 武館 (wǔguǎn) or 拳頭館 is extremely important.
These establishments were not necessarily identical to modern commercial martial-arts schools.
They could serve several functions simultaneously.
Members might practice boxing and weapons.
They might perform lion dancing.
They could participate in local religious activities.
They might assist with village defense.
Martial teachers could also possess knowledge of traditional trauma treatment, bone-setting or medicine.
The martial hall therefore existed within a larger community structure.
This is an important stage in the history we are tracing.
Martial practice was no longer visible only because soldiers were preparing for war or farmers had suddenly taken up weapons during a rebellion.
We begin to encounter communities organized around the continued transmission and practice of martial knowledge.
That is much closer to what we would recognize as traditional kung fu.
From Qing Rule to Japanese Rule
Japan took control of Taiwan in 1895.
The transition was violent, and some local armed organizations and martial practitioners participated in resistance.
The new colonial government consequently had reasons to pay attention to local organizations capable of mobilizing armed men.
Traditional Taiwanese martial culture nevertheless did not simply disappear.
And here the documentary evidence becomes much stronger.
Newspapers, government records, diaries and other modern documents allow us to see martial activity in ways that are much more difficult for earlier periods.
Research into Japanese-period Taiwan describes the continuation of local martial halls and distinguishes between different forms of martial organization.
Some public organizations combined martial practice with lion dancing, temple activities and martial arrays.
Other instruction could take place in more private martial halls.
More importantly, contemporary Japanese-period sources actually record Taiwanese martial teachers and martial activity.
We are no longer entirely dependent upon stories reconstructed generations later.
Boxing Teachers in Early Twentieth-Century Taiwan
Research using the Japanese-period newspaper Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (臺灣日日新報) reveals a surprisingly active Taiwanese martial environment.
Historical research on Japanese-period martial activity notes that Taiwanese local martial teachers and organizations participated in public martial events.
One study identifies well-known teachers in the Monga area of Taipei by the names or nicknames under which they were locally known.
The same research cites contemporary newspaper descriptions of Taiwanese martial groups practicing and publicly demonstrating their skills.
This is particularly valuable evidence.
By the early twentieth century we can document not simply weapons or militia activity but martial teachers and organized martial groups.
The documentary trail becomes even clearer in surviving personal diaries.
1934: A Student Goes to Learn Boxing
One particularly valuable example comes from the diary of Lu Jiying (陸季盈).
In October 1934, Lu recorded that he went to study 拳術 (quánshù) with Chen Tianjin (陳添進).
He explained that learning boxing was something he had wanted to do since childhood.
His diary records continued practice extending for more than a year.
He did not train alone.
He practiced together with more than ten other people and referred to traveling to the 武館, the martial hall, for instruction.
This is extraordinarily useful evidence because almost nothing needs to be reconstructed.
We have:
a named student,
a named teacher,
boxing instruction,
a martial hall,
a group of students,
and a contemporary date.
By this point there can be little doubt that Chinese martial arts existed in Taiwan as an established social practice.
The question is no longer whether people in Taiwan knew how to fight.
They were deliberately going to martial teachers to learn boxing.
1945 and 1949: Another Transformation
When Japanese rule ended in 1945, Taiwanese martial culture was already old.
The arrival of mainland Chinese martial artists following the Chinese Civil War therefore did not introduce kung fu to an island that had never possessed it.
Instead, it transformed an existing martial environment.
This distinction is extremely important.
Earlier Han Taiwanese martial culture had developed largely through migration and cultural connections with southeastern China, particularly Fujian and Guangdong, together with Taiwan's own local historical development.
After 1949, people arrived from a much wider geographical area.
Among them were military personnel and martial artists trained in systems that had previously been uncommon or largely absent in Taiwan.
Northern systems, internal martial arts and traditions from other parts of mainland China entered an island that already possessed its own southern Chinese martial culture.
Taiwan consequently became something unusual:
a meeting place between older Taiwanese martial traditions and martial systems brought from many different regions of twentieth-century China.
Organizations, teachers and students subsequently transmitted these traditions through martial associations, schools, universities, military networks and private instruction.
This later diversity is one of the reasons Taiwan eventually became so important for the preservation of traditional Chinese martial arts.
But that is another chapter in the story.
So Who Brought Kung Fu to Taiwan?
After examining the evidence, I no longer think this question has a meaningful single answer.
Nobody brought kung fu to Taiwan in one identifiable event.
Instead, we can observe a long historical process.
Chinese settlers were already living in Taiwan during Dutch rule.
By 1652, they were participating in armed conflict, although this does not establish the existence of formal martial arts.
In 1661, Zheng Chenggong brought a large organized Chinese military force to Taiwan. This securely establishes large-scale Chinese military training on the island, but military training should not automatically be equated with later traditional kung fu.
During Qing rule, continued migration from Fujian and Guangdong combined with the particular conditions of Taiwanese frontier society. Local defense, militia organization, armed feuds, temples and village communities created environments in which martial skills had practical social value.
By the nineteenth century, traditions such as those surrounding Xiluo preserve the memory of martial teachers, students and martial halls. The precise early chronology of some of these traditions remains dependent on later sources and should therefore be treated cautiously.
By the Japanese period, the documentary evidence becomes considerably stronger.
Contemporary newspapers record Taiwanese martial teachers and martial groups.
Personal diaries record people deliberately going to martial halls to study 拳術 under named teachers.
And after 1949, a new migration introduced martial traditions from many other parts of China.
The history therefore does not look like this:
China → Koxinga → Kung Fu arrives in Taiwan.
It looks more like this:
migration → armed settlement → military training → local defense → martial communities → boxing halls → regional martial traditions → twentieth-century mainland systems.
Not every stage should be called kung fu.
That is precisely the point.
Taiwan Did Not Simply Receive Chinese Martial Arts — It Developed Them
This longer history also helps explain why Taiwanese martial culture became so distinctive.
Traditions arriving from China did not remain frozen.
They entered new communities.
They interacted with local social structures, temples, village defense organizations and other martial traditions.
Teachers died.
Students changed methods.
Communities reorganized.
New systems arrived.
Old practices acquired new functions.
Some traditions disappeared.
Others survived precisely because communities considered them worth preserving after their original practical environment had changed.
Taiwan therefore should not be understood simply as a container into which Chinese martial arts were deposited.
It became its own martial environment.
And this may be the most important answer to the original question.
Kung fu did not arrive in Taiwan on one ship.
Chinese fighting practices, military traditions and later martial systems reached the island repeatedly over several centuries.
What we now recognize as Taiwanese traditional kung fu emerged from that long process of migration, transmission, adaptation and preservation.
The search for a single beginning therefore tells us less than the history of how the martial culture developed.
And, as so often happens in martial arts history, the more interesting story begins when we stop looking for a legendary founder and start looking at the evidence.
References and Further Reading
Dutch Taiwan and the Guo Huaiyi Incident
Chiu, Hsin-hui and Pol Heyns. "Weather, Harvests, and Taxes: A Chinese Revolt in Colonial Taiwan." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 46, No. 1.
https://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article/46/1/39/48963/Weather-Harvests-and-Taxes-A-Chinese-Revolt-in
National Museum of Taiwan History / Taiwan historical research resources on the Guo Huaiyi Incident.
https://www.th.gov.tw/News_Content/128/3408/
Council of Indigenous Peoples — historical materials on Chinese communities during Dutch rule.
https://ihc.cip.gov.tw/EJournal/EJournalCat/677
Zheng Chenggong
Tainan City Government — historical material concerning Zheng Chenggong's 1661 campaign in Taiwan.
https://www.tainan.gov.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=13371&s=7940998
Xiluo Seven K'an and Liu Mingshan
National Cultural Memory Bank — 西螺七崁 振興社系統.
https://tcmb.culture.tw/zh-tw/detail?id=160343&indexCode=Culture_Organization
National Cultural Memory Bank — 西螺廣興阿善師墓園.
https://tcmb.culture.tw/zh-tw/detail?id=147575&indexCode=Culture_Place
Yunlin County cultural and tourism resources — Xiluo Zhenxing Temple and A-Shan Shi.
Hakka Affairs Council — research report on the martial traditions of Xiluo Seven K'an.
https://sign.hakka.gov.tw/File/Attach/38635/File_72629.pdf
Qing and Japanese-Period Martial Culture
National Central University — Chen I-Lung, The Study of Budō Activities in Taiwan During the Japanese Colonial Era.
https://ir.lib.ncu.edu.tw/handle/987654321/4702
Academia Sinica, Institute of Taiwan History — research on the diary of Lu Jiying and rural youth leisure during the Japanese period.
National Taiwan University — research discussing traditional martial halls and martial teachers during Japanese rule.
https://tdr.lib.ntu.edu.tw/bitstream/123456789/6184/1/ntu-102-1.pdf
National Cultural Heritage / Taiwanese cultural research resources on traditional martial halls, martial arrays and local martial culture.
Postwar Martial Arts in Taiwan
Hakka Affairs Council — research discussing post-1949 martial arts development and the introduction of northern and other mainland systems to Taiwan.