Gongfu nuns show off skills at Nepal nunnery's reopening to the public

About a dozen nuns performed hand chops and high kicks, some of them wielding swords, as they showed off their martial art skills to hundreds of cheering well-wishers at the long-awaited reopening of their nunnery in Nepal.

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The nuns of the hill-top Druk Amitabha Monastery put on the show of strength to mark the institution's reopening, five years after the Covid-19 pandemic forced it to close its doors to the public.

The group of gongfu nuns, aged 17 to 30, are members of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa lineage, which gives nuns equal status as monks and is the only female order in the patriarchal Buddhist monastic system.