Businessman W. Wong, living in Hong Kong, still remembers that day in 1972, when he heard the kids in his neighborhood ignite for a character who would become their hero, and a legend. His name was Bruce Lee. This master of martial arts whose films launched the vogue of kung fu throughout the world, was one of the first Asians to know the celebrity in Hollywood. But his prodigious career came to an abrupt end after his untimely death, just fifty years ago, at only 32 years old. In Hong Kong, where Bruce Lee spent his childhood and the last years of his life, his still numerous fans organize a week of tribute with exhibitions and workshops dedicated to the martial arts. “Every child needs a role model, and I chose Bruce Lee,” says W. Wong, 54, who has run the city’s biggest fan club dedicated to the star for thirty years. Without forgetting to add immediately: “I hoped that my life would resemble that of the Bruce Lee that I saw: handsome, strong, with great skills in martial arts, a heroic image”.
In a room of Wing Chun, a derivative of kung-fu that Bruce Lee had practiced before inventing his own fighting style, Jeet Kune Do, the legend is venerated like a saint. Master of the premises, Cheng Chi-ping, 69, says that he and his members began training under the influence of Bruce Lee. “But we were never able to match his speed, his strength or his physicality,” he underlines.
The icon’s aura continued to shine for the next generation, says 45-year-old Mic Leung, who trained there and collected the master’s videotapes as a teenager. “And when we say ‘god of martial arts’, we’re only talking about Bruce Lee. It can’t be anyone else,” he adds with admiration.
The Fury of the Dragon in 1972, directed by Bruce Lee, with Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, Chuck Norris…
Born in San Francisco in 1940, Bruce Lee grew up in Hong Kong and became famous very early as a child actor, thanks to his father, a famous Cantonese opera singer. At 18, he continued his studies in the United States before teaching martial arts for the next decade, then obtaining his first roles in Hollywood, notably that of Kato in the television series The Green Hornet.
It was not until his return to Hong Kong that he landed his first leading role in the martial arts film The Big Boss (1971), which made him famous in Asia. The following year, The Fury of Victory and The Fury of the Dragon, would establish his notoriety as an implacable fighter.
Lo Wei’s Fury of Victory, in 1972, with Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, James Tien…
On July 20, 1973, the actor, who had just finished filming his fourth film, Operation Dragon, and was finishing a fifth, was struck down by cerebral edema, attributed to a bad reaction to painkillers.
Filmmaker Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, who lectured on Bruce Lee films at the University of Hong Kong, believes the actor conveyed a Chinese identity that transcended borders. “I would call Bruce Lee the paragon of Chinese-speaking success in terms of ‘soft power’ with Hong Kong characteristics,” he notes proudly.
The Big Boss by Lo Wei, in 1971, with Bruce Lee, Maria Yi, James Tien…
In Hollywood, his image went against racist stereotypes, which cast Asian men as either servants or villains. The scenes where he appears bare-chested, all in muscles, are described as “kung-fu striptease” by Han Joon Magnan-Park. “He made Asian men sexy, and that’s something I don’t think we talk about enough,” he said. Maintaining the star’s legacy in Hong Kong is not easy, however, regrets W. Wong, who specifies that government support remains occasional. In 2004, his fans managed to erect a bronze statue of him on the Hong Kong waterfront. But a campaign to rehabilitate her former home failed to save her from demolition in 2019. By visiting, with her two children, an exhibition dedicated to Bruce Lee in a public museum, a lifelong admirer born in the city explains that she wanted to transmit to them “a symbol of old Hong Kong”. W. Wong, who organized a more modest exhibition in the Sham Shui Po district, agrees that interest in Bruce Lee tends to decrease among younger people, noting however that his philosophy could come back into fashion. During the pro-democracy movement of 2019, he recalls, the demonstrators called to follow the mantra of the one who remains to this day the most famous of Hong Kongers: “Be like water”, a call to blend into the crowd … to better disappear.
