“King Of Kung Fu, and The Little Dragon” Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
“King Of Kung Fu, and The Little Dragon”
Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong American, martial artist, action film actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, filmmaker,and the founder of Jeet Kune Do.
Lee was born in Chinatown, San Francisco, to parents from Hong Kong. He was raised in Kowloon with his family until his late teens. His father introduced him to the film industry, where he appeared in several films. Lee moved to the USA at age 18. He enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The greatest influence on Lee's martial arts development was his study of Wing Chun. He began training in 1957, at the age of 16, under renowned Wing Chun teacher Yip Man. A year into his training, most of Yip Man's other students refused to train with Lee after they learned of his mixed ancestry. The Chinese in those times were generally against teaching their martial arts techniques to non-Asians.Lee's sparring partner Hawkins Cheung states, "Probably fewer than six people in the whole Wing Chun clan were personally taught, or even partly taught, by Yip Man". Lee showed a keen interest in Wing Chun, and continued to train privately with Yip Man and with Wong Shun Leung (1955).
In April 1959, Lee was sent to the United States to stay with older sister, Agnes Lee, who lived with family friends in San Francisco. Lee taught martial arts in the United States that same year. He called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu (literally Bruce Lee's Kung Fu). Lee taught friends from Seattle, starting with Judo practitionersJesse Glover and Patrick Strong, who continued to teach some of Lee's early techniques. Taky Kimura became Lee's first Assistant Instructor and continued to teach his art and philosophy after Lee's death. Lee opened his first martial arts school, named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle.
Lee and his wife Linda left college
in the spring of 1964 to live with James Lee who was twenty years senior to
Bruce and a well known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together, they
founded the second Jun Fan martial art studio in Oakland. James Lee introduced Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, organizer of
the Long Beach International
Karate Championships at which Bruce Lee was later
"discovered" by Hollywood. At
the 1964 Championship, he performed repetitions of 2-finger pushups using the
fingers of one hand, and his famous ‘one inch unstoppable punch’.
Lee’s film career began in Hong Kong but it was in Hollywood that it really took off. He appeared in The Green Hornet, Marlow, Longstreet, Iron Side and Bat Man. Plus his 5 feature films The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of The Dragon Enter The Dragon and Game of Death. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in the USA, Hong Kong, and worldwide. Lee combined his many influences into his martial arts and philosophy, which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). He emphasized that his “style of no style” was getting rid of formalized traditional styles, including Jun Fan Gung Fu.
Bruce Lee passed away under mysterious circumstances in Hong Kong in 1973. The martial arts world mourned the passing of one of its favourite sons whose life and plans were sadly cut short just as they were unfolding.
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