BEAUTIFUL TRAVELS IN ITALY, AUSTRIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE AND SPAIN
Grandmaster Wong and his wife as guests in Sifu Attilio's beautiful hotel, Punta Est, in Italy overlooking the Mediterranean Sea
Question
Good day Sifu.
I attended an Intensive Chi Kung Course in November 2003 in Sungai Petani. I want to thank you for the wonderful course and your generous teaching. It's been a long time since we met at the course in 2003. I am sure you are always energetic, smiling, as I can recall, and also as I can see on your web page all this while. Also my regards for Simou and your family. And Wahnam Secretary too.
— Jason, Malaysia
Answer
It is wonderful to hear from you and to know what you have been doing all these years.
Thank you for your kind thoughts for me, Simou, my family and the Shaolin Wahnam Secretary who has been very helpful to me all these years.
Thanks to my chi kung and kungfu training, I am not only energetic but also always smiling. Indeed, many people have asked me the secret for my vitality despite my being over 60 and my cheerfulness. The secret is that I practice what I teach, namely both the Shaolin philosophy and the Shaolin arts.
The Shaolin philosophy and arts have given me tremendous joy and meaningful living. I always feel that I have been so lucky and so blessed, for which I am very grateful.
I particularly feel blessed now when Simou, on one of her infrequent occasions, joins me in this Europe teaching trip. We flew in from Malaysia about three weeks ago and landed on Nice, a beautiful French city by the Mediterranean Sea. We rented a car and drove along the scenic Rivera coast to Monte Carlo. As we had no interest in gambling games, we by-passed the famous casino.
We drove along the unbelievable highway linking France and Italy that was literally built in the sky, all the way going through mountains by tunnels and across valleys by high pillars with coastal towns hundreds of meters below. We arrived in Ligure Finale in Italy at the hotel of Attilio, one of my senior disciples. At this hotel called Punta Est, anywhere you look is like a painted picture.
Then we drove across northern Italy into Austria and arrived at Gutensteine, where I conducted some regional chi kung courses.
Then we drove across Austria from East to West, from Vienna, the music capital of the world, to Salzburg where the “Sound of Music” was filmed. The whole of Austria is a garden, and we were driving through this garden in spring.
We drove through Switzerland where the mountains were still covered with snow. When we passed through St Morriz, the holiday town of the rich, its big, famous lake was just about to thaw.
We returned to Attilio's beautiful hotel in Italy where we gave some regional chi kung courses. After enjoying Attilio's delicious food, though Simou kept to her Italian-style Cantonese fried rice specially prepared by the chef for her, and enjoying Attilio's and Riccardo's company, we drove into France.
The scenery and architecture in France are quite different from those in Italy, Austria and Switzerland. They all have a beauty of their own. Interestingly, we found that Chinese restaurants in France were managed by Vietnamese who usually provided buffet-style fast food rather than order-by-menu dishes.
From France we entered Spain, and now we are in Barcelona giving some regional courses. We just completed a wonderful course on “Cosmic Breathing” where many participants had deeply spiritual experiences like finding themselves expanding into the Cosmos. Tomorrow we shall drive to Madrid, one of my favorite cities of the world where I had my first taste of mouth-watering jarmon and tapas.
The above is taken from Question 1 of July 2008 Part 2 of the Selection of Questions and Answers.
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