My Father the Dragon
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee is arguably the world’s most famous martial artist. Born Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco, California, in 1940, Lee grew up in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where he began training in the martial arts to test his skills and defend himself against gang violence before moving back to the United States at age eighteen. As an actor, producer, and director, Lee starred in and created legendary films such as The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon. He and his wife, Linda Emery, had two children, Brandon and Shannon. Lee died in 1973 at age thirty-two.
i was only four years old when my father died. We were in Hong Kong. I don’t remember exactly where I was or how I found out, but I believe that my brother, Brandon, and I were with our mom at our home in Kowloon Tong when we got the news that our dad had been rushed to the hospital.
Accounts of my father abound, and I am careful to separate what memories are authentically mine from what I have learned through stories. All my very early memories are of Hong Kong, where we moved when I was two years old and lived until my father died two years later.
The greatest and most vivid memory I hold of my father is an overwhelming sense of being loved by him. That hasn’t diminished in the years since he died. Throughout my life, I’ve always felt that I knew my father, that I had a sense of who he was as a human being and what was important to him energetically. I used to think I must be crazy to feel I knew this, given that we spent so little time together and I have so few memories of him. How could I have any idea what he might have wanted? But the thing about my dad, the thing you can see watching films of his even now, is how much of a presence he was. He wouldn’t have said he was a master of life force, or “qi,” but plainly he was. He could summon and deploy energy at will. His energy still pops off the screen directly into us. That is the power that so engraved itself upon my memory. That deep sense of being loved, of being supported, and of having confidence was instilled in me at a young age. I feel it holding me in my approach to the world and how I move through it. I feel safe. At certain times, this sense can become obscured, but it’s always there when I really need it, reminding me who I am. My father hasn’t been in my life since I was a toddler, but he’s never stopped guiding me.
Martial arts has always been a part of our lives. Baba (“Dad” in Chinese) had turned our backyard into an informal Jeet Kune Do training ground. Guys like James Coburn, Chuck Norris, and Steve McQueen, as well as Baba’s regular students like Ted Wong, Richard Bustillo, and Dan Inosanto, used to come over to train. I remember my mom telling me the story of Brandon’s best friend, Luke, who never wanted to come over to our house because, as he said, “There are always grown men beating the crap out of each other in the backyard!”
After our father died, Brandon and I didn’t study martial arts for many, many years. I tried, briefly, when I was about nine years old, taking a few Jeet Kune Do lessons with one of Baba’s former students. But the pressure was too great without him. There was a lot of judgment and grief—all mine, but there nonetheless. In my twenties, I finally felt that the time was right, and I asked Ted Wong, who was a family friend, to teach me. I wanted to get closer to my father through his love of kung fu and the art he created.
Ted was my dad’s protégé in that he had come to my father as a “blank slate,” never having trained prior to working with him. After my father died, Ted pored over his writings, trying to connect the dots between what he had learned and what my father had left behind. Following Baba’s lead, he had turned his backyard into an informal training area as well. Ted had gotten hold of a chunk of titanium, which he punched to toughen up his hands in the same way my father had used canvas bags and other materials to toughen his years before. Though this was in the early ’90s, in Ted’s backyard in Monterey Park, it felt like the ’70s. There, under his guidance, I reconnected with my father through the movement art he had created.
My father was famous for saying, “Be like water,” by which he meant to be fluid, responsive to the situation, alive, present. His Jeet Kune Do is a very simple art—there are no set forms and very few moves—but it requires great skill. Once you achieve a basic understanding, it’s about being able to hone, adapt, and develop your second nature as a fighter. To practice Jeet Kune Do is to practice being alive, and in learning the art, I felt drawn even closer to my father.
Shannon (one year old) and Bruce in Los Angeles, California, 1970
As I got older, I started to read more of my father’s writings. Though they were usually about martial arts and Jeet Kune Do, they also made it clear that to be like water constituted an entire life philosophy. It’s a philosophy of being open to the world, a philosophy of fluidity, and of being comfortable in the flux. Baba’s words have been a tremendous comfort and inspiration to me in the ebb and flow of my own life. When Brandon died in 1993, I leaned heavily on my dad’s writings to help me process that grief. Now, as a parent myself, I return again and again to my father’s words. I am older than he ever got to be, but he is still guiding me. It’s as if he has returned to me. It’s as if he never left.