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Episode transcript
Olivia Allen-Price: There was always something special about Bruce Lee.
Enter the Dragon theme song plays
Olivia Allen-Price: The martial artist and actor was one of the first Asian stars in Hollywood. His path to fame wasn’t easy, but it paved the way for other Asian Americans to do the same today.
There’s this famous thing Bruce said…
Bruce Lee archival: I said empty your mind…be formless, shapeless…like water. Water can flow or crash. Be water, my friend…”
Olivia Allen-Price: It’s the cornerstone of his martial arts philosophy…as much a mantra for how to live as a fighting technique. Be adaptable. Go with the flow … even if you’re riding a tidal wave.
Bruce was a disruptor in the kung fu world…a young upstart who wanted to do things differently. Though he would eventually become this legendary figure in American culture, it took him years to hone his own style and philosophy. And many of the early moments that shaped him, the ones that made him the Bruce Lee we see on the silver screen, they took place in the Bay Area.
Sam Hopkins: I assume there’s people alive still in Oakland and San Francisco who know him and have great stories to share.
Olivia Allen-Price: That’s Bay Curious listener Sam Hopkins. Sam’s first exposure to Bruce Lee was in the star’s most famous film — Enter the Dragon.
Sam Hopkins: Most people would say like the defining one in the one that first like drew me into him and pulled me in.
Olivia Allen-Price: As a kid, he loved Bruce’s kung-fu moves. But as an adult he’s come to appreciate how brave Bruce was.
Sam Hopkins: The thing that really inspires me about him is that he changed how people think. And that’s so powerful, like how they view themselves and how they view others and pushed against like all these stereotypes and all these limitations that Hollywood was putting on him and society was putting on him.
Olivia Allen-Price: Sam’s become kind of obsessed. He’s watched documentaries about Bruce Lee, been to museum exhibits about him and located local spots in San Francisco and Oakland that were meaningful in Bruce’s life.
Sam Hopkins: And I just have always wondered though, why isn’t there more in terms of honoring his legacy and all the great things that he did in his time here?
Olivia Allen-Price: There’s this one story Sam has heard over and over about “The Showdown in Oakland,” a fight between Bruce and a kung fu fighter from San Francisco that has become lore in the martial arts world. It’s one of the early moments in Bruce’s career that puts him on the map, and it’s practically a legend at this point.
Sam Hopkins: I’ve heard different versions of it. So I’m just so curious, like which one is like the most accurate?**
Olivia Allen-Price:** This is Bay Curious. The show where we answer listener questions about the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m Olivia Allen-Price.
KQED’s Elize Manoukian set out to separate fact from fiction and understand what role the Bay Area played in Bruce Lee’s life.
Elize Manoukian: There’s an interview Bruce Lee gives in 1966, right as his star is about to rise. He’s still a bit of an unknown…it seems like the interviewer doesn’t know who he is.
Bruce Lee interviewer archival: I think his name is Bruce Lee…
Elize Manoukian: In the interview, Bruce explains to a mainstream American audience what kung fu is, using the Chinese pronunciation.
Bruce Lee archival: Well, gung fu is a Chinese form of combat. Arts like karate or jiu jitsu derive from gung fu.
Elize Manoukian: Then the journalist asks him:
Bruce Lee interviewer archival: Don’t you have some karate schools in San Francisco or something?
Elize Manoukian: There are multiple issues with that question, but Bruce homes in on just one.
Bruce Lee archival: In Oakland, really.
Elize Manoukian: Even at this early point in his Hollywood career, the difference between the two Bay Area cities was important to him. You’ll soon hear why.
Bruce lived in the Bay Area only a short while — just a few years — but his time in Oakland and San Francisco would go on to have a major influence on his career, and some have argued, on the way we think about martial arts in the U.S.
Jeff Chang: It’s a story in a way of how gung fu…how Kung Fu becomes American
Elize Manoukian: That’s historian and cultural critic Jeff Chang, the author of a recent Bruce Lee biography, “Water, Mirror, Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America.”
I asked him to tell me about Bruce’s life here, starting from the very beginning.
Jeff Chang: Bruce was born in the Bay Area. He is there because his parents are on a tour. His dad is a famous Cantonese opera singer.
Elize Manoukian: And while his dad is performing in San Francisco, his mom becomes pregnant
Jeff Chang: So he’s born in this segregated hospital in 1940.
Elize Manoukian: In San Francisco’s Chinese Hospital, which is still open today. His mom, Grace, names her baby Bruce.
Soon after, the family heads back to Hong Kong, which is quickly becoming the heart of Asia’s film industry.
Bruce’s dad, Hoi Cheun, transitions from singing opera to acting in movies. And at a young age, Bruce starts acting too.
Jeff Chang: So the directors are looking at who’s this kid. He’s so, he’s so fascinating. He’s got so much energy. He loves to be. He’s like a born showperson. Let’s put him in the movies.
Bruce Lee speaking Cantonese in The Kid
Elize Manoukian: That’s Bruce at age 10, in a movie called the Kid. It’s about a tough street urchin with a heart of gold. The film premieres in 1950, and it’s a smash success in Hong Kong. But being famous is hard on Bruce, and he starts getting picked on in school.
This is Bruce Lee’s martial arts origin story.
Jeff Chang: And so he learns to try to figure out ways of protecting himself.
And eventually, he meets a seifu, a Gongfu seifu named Yipman.
Elize Manoukian: Yipman is a legendary figure in 1950s Hong Kong. He trains Bruce in a discipline called Wing Chun.
At this point, Hong Kong’s youth culture is obsessed with kung fu and streetfighting. Kids would literally challenge each other and battle on school rooftops.
Jeff Chang: Turns out that Bruce really loves the taste of blood on his lips.
Elize Manoukian: Bruce has a short fuse and loves “talking with his hands,”. During his teen years, he gets a bad boy, James-Dean-kinda reputation in Hong Kong. He even gets kicked out of school for fighting. One day, when Bruce is 18 years old, the police come to his parents house, and tell them that if he stays in Hong Kong, he’ll be arrested.
Jeff Chang: And his parents are like, that’s it. You know, the police are after you, like the gangs are after you. You’re not, you’re not going to be here anymore. We’re going to send you back to the U.S.
Elize Manoukian: Remember, Bruce was born in the U.S., so he’s a citizen. In 1959, his parents give him $100 and send him to live with one of their friends in San Francisco Chinatown.
Bruce gets a job, his first non-acting job, at a restaurant.
Jeff Chang: He hates it. He can’t take it. Like, this is beneath me. You know, I’ve been on the movie screen, and now you got me cutting carrots. Like, no, I’m not, I’m not about that life. So he quits in a day. And his guardian is like, OK, — Well, I guess we have to have you teach cha-cha then.
Elize Manoukian: Oh, I forgot to mention: Bruce is an amazing dancer.
The Cha-cha was a huge craze in 1950s Hong Kong, and Bruce is super athletic.
So while learning English, Bruce starts teaching cha-cha to San Francisco’s Chinese community to make money. But he’s bored. And restless.
Jeff Chang: And he’s like, where are the fighters here?
Elize Manoukian: He can’t help himself. There’s some part of him that just needs to feel the rush of a real, flesh-and-blood fight again.
So he walks into a kung fu school and challenges the other students to a fight.
Jeff Chang: And they run him out immediately.
Elize Manoukian: It’s the first in a long list of grievances San Francisco’s kung fu community will have with Bruce.
As if his parents read the writing on the wall, they decide to send him to Seattle.
Jeff Chang: His parents are like, OK, you’re going to get in trouble again. We’re sending you to a place where there’s less Chinese, there’s less distractions. And you’re going to finish your fricking diploma, and you’re going to get a college degree.
Elize Manoukian: He never gets that diploma. In fact, Bruce doesn’t last long in Seattle, although he does end up getting married to a woman named Linda while he’s there. The Bay Area is the heart of the West Coast’s martial arts scene, and Bruce wants to get back there. So he drops out of the University of Washington, moves his young family, and gambles everything…on the Bay.
Olivia Allen Price: Back in Oakland, Bruce meets some folks who help him refine his theories and practice of martial arts. More on that when we come back.
Olivia Allen-Price: The year is 1964, a time of major cultural change. Young people are questioning everything about U.S. society. And Bruce Lee, who has just moved back to the Bay Area as a 24-year-old college dropout, is going through his own personal revolution. He isn’t just studying martial arts; he has some radical ideas about its future. And he finds some enthusiastic disciples in the Bay Area. Elize Manoukian takes us to Oakland.
Greglon Lee: Yeah, this is the old house: 3039 Monticello.
Elize Manoukian: That’s Greglon Lee, a kung fu sifu based in Berkeley. He’s showing me the funky, yellow bungalow in the East Oakland hills where he once lived with Bruce Lee.
Greglon Lee: Bruce spent a lot of time here, and he was basically training 10-12 hours a day.
Elize Manoukian: Even as a college student, Bruce had picked up kung fu students across the West Coast. And one of the most dedicated was a man named James Yimm Lee, Greglon’s dad.
Greglon Lee: My dad was one of his top students; my dad had been training with him for a few years.
Elize Manoukian: James was a local streetfighter and bodybuilder. He became fascinated with kung fu, wanted to modernize and popularize it. He knew Bruce could help. So he convinced Bruce and his family to move in with him and his kids in the East Bay.
Greglon Lee: You come down to Oakland. We got you covered, roof over your head, and you can train and do whatever you want.
Elize Manoukian: James filled his garage with a bunch of diy equipment — punching pads, shields, leg stretchers. The two men scrutinized reels of Mohammed Ali boxing fights. They practiced what worked from classical styles of martial arts and threw away the rest.
Greglon Lee: To get better when you’re already good ain’t easy. You really have to break things down completely.
Elize Manoukian: James was helping Bruce invent a NEW style of martial arts that tried to break away from set technique completely. Classical kung fu was too rigid, they said. Instead, they experimented with fusing wing chun, boxing, street fighting with some heavy doses of Daoist philosophy.
Greglon Lee: The individual has to really do their own work. There’s no magic pill. There’s no magic movement to martial arts. It’s getting to know yourself.
Elize Manoukian: Bruce’s homegrown fighting style would eventually become known as Jeet Kun Do, or as Greg calls it, JKD.
Greglon Lee: And you’ve got to remember the Cha Cha taught him really good footwork and how to change timing, which is really the key to J. K. D. It’s not static.
Elize Manoukian: Bruce and James gain some attention for their new fighting style. Students come from hundreds of miles away to study with them. They pick up enough disciples that they decide to open up a little studio on Broadway Street in Oakland, near what’s now auto row.
Greglon Lee: My dad was twenty years older, but he let Bruce run everything. Because Bruce knew what he was doing and it was obvious that Bruce had it.
Elize Manoukian: In Oakland, Bruce gains confidence in his approach to martial arts, and he’s convinced the San Francisco kung fu scene is backwards … he’s not shy about sharing that opinion.
Here’s Bruce Lee biographer Jeff Chang again:
Jeff Chang: He’s basically saying, all of your schools, all the stuff they teach you: That’s all garbage.
Elize Manoukian: And some people in San Francisco get wind of this.
Jeff Chang: They don’t have short-term memories. Like, they remember when Bruce first was there.
Elize Manoukian: It all comes to a head in the summer of 1964.
Bruce is promoting his Oakland school, in a kung fu demonstration at San Francisco’s Sun Sing Theater, the same stage where his dad performed opera, two decades earlier.
During his demo, he starts critiquing the style of teaching in San Francisco, but in kind of a brash, 24-year-old way.
Jeff Chang: Everything that you’ve been taught is no good. Let me show you how a real martial artist does things. Provocative, right?
Elize Manoukian: The air in the theater is hazy with cigarette smoke. And the crowd is full of San Francisco martial artists.
Jeff Chang: They’re just waiting for Bruce to make a wrong move.
Elize Manoukian: Then he invites somebody on stage, and says, try to defend yourself using your style, and I’ll show you why mine’s better
Jeff Chang: He wants to show the speed and accuracy of his punch. As it turns out, the guy that comes up to be on stage with him is somebody who’s deeply affiliated with the Chinatown koons.
Elize Manoukian: The koons are kung fu schools.
The volunteer blocks Bruce’s punch. Bruce tries again, and the kid blocks it again. Then, the kid puts up his fists, ready for a fight.
Jeff Chang: And everybody starts hooting and hollering, ’cause they’re cheering for the guy who came up from the audience. That’s their guy, right? He’s like a ringer.
Elize Manoukian: Bruce is embarrassed. But he stops and collects himself… trying to refocus the message on what his school has to offer.
Jeff Chang: And he says, “If you want more, come and see me in Oakland.” And what he really means is, “My school is in Oakland. You’re welcome to come, we’ll train and that kind of thing.”
Elize Manoukian: But at this point, tempers are high. And to the riled-up crowd it sounds like Bruce is saying: “let’s finish what we started, meet me in Oakland.”
Jeff Chang: This spreads through the sort of underground pipeline, right? The coconut wireless really fast.
Elize Manoukian: Soon every martial artist in the Bay Area is talking about what happened at the theater. And some San Francisco guys decide to challenge Bruce to a fight.
Jeff Chang: They want to see Bruce get his ass beaten.
Elize Manoukian: So they recruit an up-and-coming martial artist named Wong Jack-man, telling him, you’re our best hope to take this guy down.
Now, Wong wasn’t at the Sun Sing Theater, and by all accounts, didn’t really seem to know what he was walking into.
Jeff Chang: WongJack-man thinks he’s going to Oakland to fight a comparison fight. It’s a friendly kind of thing. Everybody goes out and has tea and dim sum afterwards, right?
Elize Manoukian: Instead, he’s an unwitting participant in one of Bruce Lee’s most famous fights. The Showdown in Oakland.
Here’s what happened according to Jeff and Greglon:
Jeff Chang: They come to the studio at dusk on a November evening. And at the studio are James, James Yimm Lee, Bruce and Linda.
Greglon Lee: I know that my dad did bring a gun just in case, just in case things got out of control.
Elize Manoukian: Elize: It starts out friendly enough…
Jeff Chang: Wong Jack-man reaches his hand out, and that Bruce, uh, sort of gives a faint instead.
Elize Manoukian: And lashes out with a punch
Jeff Chang: That is directed at Wong Jack-man’s eyes.
Elize Manoukian: So hard it leaves a mark.
Jeff Chang: And the realization that, Oh, Bruce is actually out for blood, like this is something serious.
Elize Manoukian: Bruce presses in. He uses low kicks and close-up punches.
Greglon Lee: Most people Bruce dealt with, he could take them out in about five seconds.
Elize Manoukian: But Wong sidesteps the assault and deflects with his forearms. He uses long and graceful kicks and wide diagonal blows — like axes coming down — he hits Bruce HARD in the neck, and gets Bruce into a headlock.
Jeff Chang: Like holding his neck under his arm.
Elize Manoukian: Wong Jack-man could have won right there. But he lets go. He considers Bruce an opponent, not a mortal enemy. Bruce seizes the opportunity and attacks.
Greglon Lee: Wong Jack-man started running.
Jeff Chang: And he trips on a floorboard and falls down. Bruce pounces on him.
Elize Manoukian: They’re on the floor, with Bruce yelling, “You lost, admit it!” Their friends jump in and separate the two. And that was that. A pretty messy fight, ended by a floorboard. Not at all the resolution to the Oakland- San Francisco rivalry.
Except the story doesn’t end there. The fight at the studio was just the beginning.
Jeff Chang: It became a story that just passed word of mouth. The word gets back to Hong Kong.
Greglon Lee: The magazines picked up about Bruce and Wong Jack-man, all kinds of rumors.
Elize Manoukian: In one story, Wong Jack-man kills Bruce. In others, Bruce is defending the honor of an actress from Hong Kong.
But the biggest story — the one that has prevailed — is that the fight was about who gets to learn kung fu.
Jeff Chang: Very famously, the fight has been portrayed as this thing where Bruce was defending his right to teach non-Chinese people.
Elize Manoukian: It’s part of the mythology around Bruce Lee, that he not only popularizes kung fu…
Jeff Chang: He opens the doors for non-Chinese to kind of study it.
Elize Manoukian: Though it’s a compelling story, it’s just not true. After all, this is San Francisco in the 60s we’re talking about here.