July 20th marked the 37th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death. A martial artist and actor, Lee still remains a legend in the world of martial arts. He’s also one of the only people of Chinese ethnicity to do well in Hollywood and become famous in the West. Lee was instrumental in catapulting kung fu films to mainstream success, paving the way for Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Mixed martial arts, a growing sport today, owes much to Lee’s philosophies. If you’re interested in studying martial arts in China check out this article. You might want to check this description of life at Shaolin, and these pictures out first. Ever wondered how Chinese kungfu would fare against other martial arts? Take a look at this.

Read on for the incredible story of Lee’s transformation from child star, to street fighter, to martial arts master.

 

Lee was born in San Francisco in 1940 to a Chinese father and a Chinese-German mother. His father Lee Hoi-chuen, a popular Cantonese opera and film actor, brought the family back to Hong Kong after Bruce’s birth. Not long after Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese. Though his mother’s family was rich and powerful, Hong Kong was dangerous, crowded with refugees from mainland China and rife with gangs. Lee’s father began teaching him tai chi chuan after Lee was involved in a number of fights. He went on to train with legendary Wing Chun master Yip Man. The recent films Ip Man and Ip Man 2 starring Donny Yen are fictionalized accounts of Yip’s life. Since Chinese martial artists generally refused to teach their arts to non-Asians, many of Yip’s students stopped training with Lee after discovering he had a German grandparent. Lee also studied boxing, winning championships while in high school.

After he was nearly jailed for fighting, Lee’s parents sent him back to San Francisco. He studied drama at the University of Washington in Seattle, though Lee would later claim his major was philosophy.

He began teaching a style of martial arts which he modestly named after himself. Lee left university in 1964, moving to California to open his own school. The Chinese martial arts community still resented practitioners teaching non-Chinese students. This led to a challenge match with local martial artist Wong Jack Man – a match whose outcome is still disputed, though Lee continued to teach non-Chinese.

Frustrated with the restrictions of studying a single martial art, Lee branched out, eventually creating a martial arts called Jeet Kune Do – Way of the Intercepting Fist. He trained boxing and other Asian martial arts and was one of the first Asian martial artists to aggressively train strength, condition and flexibility. Lee was instrumental in creating the modern idea of a martial artist. In addition to training martial art styles, he did cardio and strength training, embraced proper nutrition, preached the importance of strengthening one’s core, and toughened his hands by punching into buckets of gravel hundreds of times each day.

Lee could do fifty one arm chin ups and curl 75 lbs with each arm (despite weighing only double that). He developed a one inch punch that could knock a man backwards without any arm movement. The first public recipient of the punch begged Lee not to demonstrate it again after he missed several days of work due to chest pain. He could kick a 200lb heavy bag so hard it would fly up and smack the ceiling. Lee’s speed was such that fight scenes had to be filmed with extra-fast film so that his movement would be clear when replayed in slow motion. Jackie Chan started his career as an extra in one of Lee’s films. Lee was so much faster than Chan that he hit Chan full force in the face with a staff. Lee apparently apologized profusely. One wonders if these blows eventually led to some of Chan’s controversial comments.

Still a street fighter at heart, Lee accepted many challenges, repeatedly proving his strength, speed and power. Karate champions weren’t fast enough to stop his punches and other martial arts masters couldn’t top his skill. Lee knocked out a karate black belt in 11 seconds in Seattle, though some say it only took him 10. During that brief time Lee hit the Japanese challenger more than a dozen times and kicked him the length of the gym, causing some observers to worry that Lee had killed the man. Lee was not as Zen as he perhaps could’ve been – he once severely beat a movie extra who kept challenging him, and severely assaulted a man who broke into Lee’s home in order to fight him.  

Lee first appeared in a film when he was a baby, carried by his actor father. By adolescence he’d been in dozens of movies. After giving up film for martial arts, Lee returned to the screen in 1964 as Kato in the American TV series The Green Hornet. The show was also a hit back in Hong Kong. Lee and his wife claim that the show Kung Fu was created by Lee, but studio officials gave the role to David Carradine, fearing audiences would not accept a Chinese lead actor – a fear which probably still holds in Hollywood, more than four decades later. Lee starred in The Big Boss and martial arts classic Fist of Fury, later remade by Shaolin Temple star Jet Li as Fist of Legend. A movie deal in Hollywood gave him full control of 1972’s Way of the Dragon, which launched karate champion Chuck Norris’s career with an epic fight scene at the Coliseum. Before their death match, Lee and Norris warm up in the Roman landmark. The scene highlights Lee’s freakish physique and shows how innovative his approach was. While Norris shadowboxes with tight powerful movements, Lee does two finger pushups, bends over to touch his head to his shins, then straightens up and leans all the way backwards into a full bridge.

Shortly after filming for Enter the Dragon was completed, Lee passed away in Hong Kong. He survived cerebral edema – a swelling of the brain – only to die a few days later. There is still some controversy over Lee’s death. Explanations have ranged from a lethal reaction to headache medicine or marijuana, to the theory that he was killed by the vibrating palm technique or a Dim Mak punch he’d been hit with a few weeks before.

Lee remains both a martial arts legend and one of the few actors of Chinese ethnicity to ever make it in the West. While Jackie Chan and Jet Li have done well, Donny Yun has yet to achieve crossover success, and there currently don’t seem to be any other contenders likely to win over fans overseas. His movies have inspired to take up martial arts, and his philosophies, and training styles, have not only changed martial arts, but had a significant effect on how the West views Chinese. His influence is still felt today in films like the Bollywood-kung fu mashup Chandni Chwok to China. Lee may be gone, but he’s certainly not forgotten.

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