 | Bruce Lee: Encyclopedia II - Bruce Lee - Early Life
Bruce Lee - Early Life
Bruce Lee was born at the Chinese Hospital[1] in San Francisco to his Chinese father, Lee Hoi-Chuen (李海泉) and mother Grace Lee (何金棠).
Bruce Lee - Names
Lee's Cantonese name, Lee Jun Fan (李振藩; Mandarin Pinyin: Lǐ Zhènfán), literally means "invigorate San Francisco," paying homage to the Chinese name of his birthplace, San Francisco, California (三藩市). At birth, Lee was given the English name "Bruce" by nurses at the hospital[2].
In addition, Lee initially had a birth name (李炫金; Mandarin Pinyin: Lǐ Xuànjīn) given by his mother, as at the time Lee's father was away on a Chinese opera tour. After several months, when Lee's father returned, the name was abandoned because of a conflict with the name of Lee's grandfather — in Chinese culture, it is considered a taboo to give a child a name that is the same as an ancestor's. Lee was then renamed Jun Fan. Finally, Lee was also given a feminine name, Sai Feng (細鳳, literally "Slender Phœnix"), used throughout his early childhood in keeping with a Chinese custom traditionally thought to hide the child from evil spirits.
Bruce Lee's screen name was Lee Siu Lung in Cantonese and Li Xiao Long in Mandarin (李小龍; Cantonese pengyam: Ley5 Siw2 Long4; Mandarin Pinyin: Lǐ Xiǎolóng) which literally means "Lee Little Dragon." These were first used by director 袁步雲 of the 1950 Cantonese movie 細路祥 in which Lee performed.
Bruce Lee - Education and Martial Arts Training
Bruce Lee was a very well-rounded man; well educated both academically and in the field of martial arts. His studies of Kung Fu sparked his enthusiasm and understanding of martial arts. Later Lee studied Karate, Judo, Jiu jitsu, and other styles of martial arts.
Bruce Lee received his early education and Kung Fu training in Hong Kong. Because of his father's fame as a Chinese opera actor, Lee had the opportunity to appear in several Hong Kong movies as a child. He studied the Wing Chun style of martial arts at a young age and picked up the languages of English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.
Bruce Lee loved to fight, and one day as he was walking out of a classroom in school, several students jumped him, and beat him up. Since Bruce was eager to learn martial arts, after seeing his father practice Tai Chi Chuan, he was enrolled in Wing Chun Gung Fu, under Grandmaster Yip Man.
At age 14, Bruce Lee enters La Salle College, a high school, under the wing of Brother Henry. His favorite activity was beating up British boys. He got in more and more fights. In 1959, Bruce got in a fight with a feared Triad gang member's son, and his father worried, so he and his wife decided to send Bruce to America, to live with an old friend of his father's. All he had was $100 in his pocket and the title of 1958 Crown Colony Cha Cha Champion of Hong Kong. After living in San Francisco for awhile, he moves to Seattle to work for Ruby Chow, another friend of his father's.
In 1959, Bruce Lee went to Seattle, to complete his high school education. He received his diploma from Edison Technical School and enrolled at the University of Washington as a Philosophy major. It was at the University of Washington that he met his future wife, Linda Emery, whom he would marry in 1964. Lee had two children- a daughter, Shannon, and a son, actor Brandon Lee, who was tragically killed during a film set accident in 1993.
Bruce Lee - Early acting career
A few credits short of graduation from the University of Washington, Bruce Lee headed to San Francisco and then Hollywood.
In 1964 at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, the soon-to-be-famous Lee met karate black belt champion Chuck Norris. Lee would later introduce Norris to portray one of Lee's opponents in Return of the Dragon, aka Way of the Dragon, in a famous Colosseum fight scene regarded by some as the best martial arts fight ever filmed.
Lee went on to star as Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet, which ran from 1966 to 1967 and afterward opened up his own Jeet Kune Do school. Later Lee would use filmmaking to prove and to demonstrate his fighting theories.
Bruce Lee - Success in Hong Kong
In 1971, unable to find acting roles and faced with stereotypes regarding Asian actors, Lee returned to Hong Kong with his family. There, he starred in martial arts movies, earning $30,000 for his first two feature films, cementing his fame.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early Life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
