A magician from Bao’an District won the first prize in the Micro Magic category at the 2018 FISM World Championship of Magic in South Korea for his original magic show named “Time Travel” on July 14, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported Wednesday.
Bill Chueng Yu, who is trained by a Shenzhen magic company called Jieli, is the first magician on the Chinese mainland to win the honor since the championship was launched 81 years ago. FISM, standing for the International Federation of Magic Societies, is a professional magic organization. The FISM competition, held triennially, was conducted in Pusan this year, attracting more than 2,000 magicians from around the world.
At a press conference in Shenzhen on Wednesday, Chueng said he wanted to change the stereotype that many foreign magicians have of Chinese magic — imitation performances.
“I have thought about performing a magic show themed around time travel since 2015 due to an old magic tale I had heard,” said he.
Xu Qiu, deputy director of the China Literary Federation and Acrobatics Center, said Chueng had a positive impact on Chinese magic and would inspire more Chinese magicians to create better shows.
Chueng has also been awarded many other top prizes, including the FISM European Close up Grand Prix and the European Champion of Card Magic in 2017.
Chueng started practicing magic tricks while studying computer science at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He joined a magic club in Vienna in 2005 while studying at Vienna University of Technology and took part in a magic competition in Budapest in 2008, which led him to resign from his job and become a professional magician.