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!



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