You Can See His Chi!
by Sifu Mirco Corrarino
Genoa, Italy
My first trip to America to study from Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong was in 1992.
I studied many other martial arts styles and I won many fighting
championships in Italy. I also trained many champion European full contact
fighters too! When I was in my teenage years, I had already read a lot about
Grandmaster Wong from the American martial arts magazines.
It was my dream to study with Grandmaster Wong in his school. Because it was
my first time in America, it was very difficult for me to understand
American English. It seemed like everybody talked so fast and it was hard
for me to understand, at this time my communication with Grandmaster and
Sifu Jason Wong was very limited. I joined the Choy Li Fut class and trained
with his staff instructors in the school. One year later, I came again. This
time I was able to talk to Grandmaster a little better. I admired his high
level of Chi Kung training and his Tai Chi skill, I asked him to teach me
these besides Choy Li Fut kung fu. He told me to come to his morning tai chi
classes at City College in the Tel Hi Center of the North Beach district of
San Francisco. I began to learn traditional Yang style Tai Chi Chuan and Chi
Kung standing meditation (zhan zhuong) from him. Slowly with hard work, I
learned how to do push hands also.
I kept coming back to San Francisco year after year, sometimes twice a year
for learning and training with Grandmaster Wong. (I also asked him to teach
me how to speak Cantonese; now I can speak Mandarin) With all the hard work
and my previous martial arts background, I finally passed my advanced level
testing in 1996. With Grandmaster’s permission, I opened a school in my
hometown. In November 1997, I invited Grandmaster to come to Italy to give
seminars to my students and I took him to the major cities in Italy for
sight-seeing. The day before his trip was over; I decided to take some
photos for the Italian martial arts magazine. I set up the camera in my
school and I took four rolls of 32 exposures. I made him stand in Choy Li
Fut and Tai Chi positions. At the end there was two more shots left; I had
him did two positions of Chi Kung posture. At the end of the day I picked up
the prints from the photo shop. We viewed all the pictures and try to
caption the pictures for the magazine. I discovered the two Chi Kung
pictures which had light on top of his head. All the other photos didn’t
have the light above his head. I set the camera with the flash light on the
tripod at the same spot for all the shots, only the two Chi Kung pictures
had the light. I check the film to see if it was exposed to the light and I
didn’t see anything wrong with the film. I took the film to the photo shop
to ask the technician for opinion, but the man said that they were normal
photos. I was so happy that I could catch the Chi on film that came out from
Grandmaster’s head in my photos!