Great Personalities

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee (Lee Jun Fan) was a Chinese American and Hong Kong actor, martial artist, philosopher, film director, screenwriter, practitioner of Wing Chun and founder of the Jeet Kune Do concept. He is considered by many as the most influential martial artist of the 20th century, and a cultural icon.
Lee was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Hong Kong until his late teens. His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked the second major surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world as well. He is noted for his roles in five feature length films, Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Bruce Lee; Warner Brothers’ Enter the Dragon (1973), directed by Robert Clouse, and The Game of Death (1978).
Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world and remains very popular among Asian people and in particular among the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese nationalism and upheld the Chinese national pride at a crucial time in history and also of Asians through his movies which reached every part of the known world. While Lee initially trained in Wing Chun, he later rejected well-defined martial art styles, favoring instead to utilize useful techniques from various sources in the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist).

Early life

Bruce Lee was born on 27 November 1940 at the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown. His father Lee Hoi-Chuen was Chinese, and his mother Grace Ho was of Chinese and German ancestry. His father was an opera and a film actor. He was the fourth child of five children: Agnes, Phoebe, Peter, and Robert. Lee and his parents returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old.

Education and martial Arts

After attending Tak Sun School, Lee entered the primary school division of La Salle College in 1950 or 1952 (at the age of 12). In around 1956, due to poor academic performance (or possibly poor conduct as well), he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier’s College (high school) where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a Catholic monk teacher, and coach of the school boxing team. Despite the advantage of his family’s status during his youth, and because of the mass number of people fleeing communist China to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong neighborhood he grew up in became over-crowded, dangerous, and full of gang rivalries. Gangs ruled the city streets and Lee was often forced to fight them. But Bruce liked a challenge and faced his adversaries head on. To his parents dismay Bruce’s street fighting continued and the violent nature of his confrontations was escalating.
After being involved in several street fights, his parents decided that Bruce Lee needed to be trained in the martial arts. Lee’s first introduction to martial arts was through his father, Lee Hoi Cheun. He learned the fundamentals of Wu style Tai Chi Chuan from his father.
At the age of 13, he learnt the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun from the famous master Yip Man.
At the age of 18, he went to United States. There, while working for Ruby Chow as a live-in waiter at her restaurant, he completed his high school education and in 1961 he enrolled at the University of Washington majoring in drama. He studied philosophy, psychology, and various other subjects as well.

Later Life

He married Linda Emery in August 1964 and had two children namely, Brandon Lee and Shannon Lee who later became an actor and an actress.
Lee began teaching martial arts in 1959 and founded his first martial arts school called the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle. In 1964, with the Chinese martial artist James Yin Lee, he co-founded the second Jun Fan martial art studio in Oakland. His first appearance in the Long Beach Interna-tional Karate Championship was in 1964. - Internet