Lau Bun and Bruce Lee
As i’ve said, Professor Lau Bun was THE chinatown godfather, not only packed with his gung fu, from what i understand the man also used to carry around a 6 shooter revolver. Again, the man would never display his gung fu unless he planned on killing you with it.
anyways, Lau Bun and his students had more than one encounter with the legendary bruce lee. In fact, i only recently came to learn (there’s a well known person here who was an eye witness when i learned this) Lau Bun school was majorly involved in not allowing Bruce Lee to teach the Gwai Lo.
Even more surprising to hear was the late Bing Chan (my sifu’s first sifu) was the one who wrote up the declaration to bruce lee telling him why he shouldn’t be teaching Gwai Lo and if it doesn’t stop a match was to be set up in which Wong Jack Man ended up fighting him.
I recall my elders telling me that before bruce lee came to know lau bun one of lau buns students kicked the ass of bruce lee’s student. bruce came over to the hung sing kwoon yelling and screaming, and Lau Bun came out of his office and asked what the problem was. The moment bruce layed his eyes on lau bun he just put his head down and walked away.
The next two stories have to do with chasing off bruces students. The fisst is my Si-bak Ah Foon and his classmates were practicing gung fu when the green Hornet (bruce Lee’s student) came into lau bun’s hung sing kwoon starting trouble. Ah foon was the first to get to him but he ended up fighting the green hornet up the stairs and out into the streets kicking that arse.
next, my sifu recalls during chinese new years in 1967 bruce lee’s students were all pumped up and came down the stairs in Bing Chan’s Lup Mo studio when Kenneth also fought him up the stairs and out into the street beating the heck out of him. Kenneth was a serious bad ass.
My sifu once told me a story that bruce lee rented out the Sun Sing movie theater to promote his style. while on stage he was bragging about how fast his hands were and asked for some audience participation to see if anyone could block his punches. So Kenneth’s classmates finally convinced him to go up on stage. Bruce introduced himself and demo’d what he was going to do by actually throwing a couple of punches and kenneth blocked those. Then bruce lee charged and kenneth used our downward windmill blocks and blocked every single punch bruce threw. the crowd must have been ecstatic and i can’t imagine kenneth’s classmates and what they were thinking. anyways, they went back to bing chan and told him what happened, and bing chan asked one question…“did you hit him back?” Kenneth said NO. From what i hear is that bing chan got hella ****ed about kenneth waisting his time by just blocking, he should have laid into bruce.
I would like to state now, that these stories are in NO WAY intended to insult or offend any of Bruce Lee’s descendants and followers. The man was very good for his time, but let’s remember, he was still a man.
peace.
