Bruce Lee - The Little Dragon

Bruce Lee Biography and History of Jeet Kune Do

Bruce Lee wanted to be unique! He would study all forms of martial arts and take what he felt was useful to himself and not worry about the rest of it. He wanted to accomplish one thing, win the fight! He didn't want to mess around! He wanted to attain his goal in the least steps possible too! That is why he studied all forms of martial arts and applied what would work for him and his body! Because he studied so many martial arts some consider Bruce Lee the grandfather of Mixed Martial Arts (if you are interested in learning some cool moves Click Here!).

He later gave this form or system of his a name and he began teaching this "way" or style to others who he felt was worthy to teach. He would also teach his Jeet Kune Do to others while they taught their style to him!

Lets let Bruce Lee himself explain this a little more!
These are his own quotes!

Jeet Kune Do is training and discipline towards the ultimate reality in combat.
Jeet Kune Do is the only non-classical style of Chinese Kung Fu in existence today. It is simple in its execution, although not so simple to explain. Jeet means 'to stop, to stem, to intercept,' while Kune means 'fist' or 'style,' and Do means 'the way' or 'the ultimate reality.' In other words--'The Way of the Intercepting Fist.'

Even after Bruce Lee's untimely death, his Jeet Kune Do and his legacy has lived on. There are schools open today that teach this system to others.

Famous Bruce Lee quote. (my personal favorite!)

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

Even after death, Bruce Lee's legacy has lived on. Jeet Kune Do has become increasingly popular! Read about a little history of Bruce Lee!
I bet you are wondering....
How did Bruce Lee die?
When did Bruce Lee Die?

On July 20th, 1973 Bruce Lee was in Hong Kong filming his movie Enter the Dragon. During a filming break Bruce had complained of a head ache and took a couple head ache pills and laid down to rest. He never woke back up. His official cause of death was Cerebral Edema or swelling on the brain.
Enter The Dragon opened three weeks later nation wide to mourning fans who lined up for blocks in all cities that the movie showed in.

These are the films Bruce Lee made!
Bruce Lee was also a movie star. He had 5 full length films. Bruce Lee used the movie stardom to further his Martial Arts studies! Watch his fight scenes to see Bruce lee demonstrate his Jeet Kune Do fighting style!

Big Boss
Fists of Fury
Way of the Dragon
Enter the Dragon
Game of Death

Kept away from Hollywood because of his race, Bruce Lee decided to give Hong Kong producer Raymond Chow a chance and began making movies in Hong Kong. The first full length movie Bruce Lee starred in is

Fists of Fury!

Chein (Bruce Lee) is a city boy who moves with his cousins to work at an ice factory. He does this with a family promise never to get involved in any fight. However, when members of his family begin disappearing after meeting the management of the factor, the resulting mystery and pressures forces him to break that vow and take on the villainy of the Big Boss.

Until the success of Fists of Fury, Bruce Lee did not feel that movies would be his chosen career. After his first movie was so successful, it launched Bruce into a cult like figure. His movies would from then on fill the movie house night after night with each new release! As was the case with his next movie,
The Chinese Connection

Chen Chen returns to the international compound of China only to learn of his beloved teacher's death. This is compounded by the continual racist harassment by the Japanese population in the area. Unlike his friends, he confronts it head on with his mastery of martial arts while investigating his teacher's murder.

Nothing could stop Bruce Lee from achieving super stardom now. Hollywood would certainly be knocking on Bruce Lee's door now with the success of 2 movies. Knocking on his door than came too! We are so glad they did! The result is this next Bruce Lee movie with Chuck Norris as the co-star!
Return of the Dragon

Tang Lung (Bruce Lee) arrives in Rome to help his cousins in the restaurant business. They are being pressured to sell their property to the syndicate, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. When Tang arrives he poses a new threat to the syndicate, and they are unable to defeat him. The syndicate boss hires the best Japanese and European martial artists to fight Tang, but he easily finishes them off. The American martial artist Colt (Chuck Norris) is hired and has a showdown with Tang in Rome's famous Colosseum.

Enter the Dragon is the best martial arts movie Bruce Lee ever made. This movie is responsible for what good kick butt movies have become today. Stars like Jackie Chan, who is an extra in Enter the Dragon, Jet Li and other great stars owe their life's to this movie and Bruce Lee for making this movie!

Enter the Dragon

Lee, a member of a Shaolin Temple, is a master of the physical and spiritual disciplines of the martial arts, and is being visited by Braithwaite, a British law officer. Lee has been invited to a tri-annual martial arts tournament held on an island owned by Han, a reclusive billionaire who was once a member of the Temple but has now become a renegade. Braithwaite believes Han uses his tournaments as cover for narcotic and prostitution activities. Lee reluctantly agrees to enter the tournament, but his reluctance to confront Han disappears when a Shaolin monk reveals that during the previous staging of this tournament, he and Lee's sister were accosted by several toughs led by Han's personal bodyguard, an American named O'Hara. In the ensuing confrontation the monk cut a deep scar on O'Hara's face but Lee's sister ultimately perished, and at her gravesite Lee vowes revenge for her death. Also attending the tournament are two American martial arts experts, John Roper and Kelly Williams, who served together in Vietnam and took differing paths toward martial arts upon their discharge - Roper is on the run from Mafia gambling debt collectors, while Williams was accosted by two racist cops whom he'd dispatched before stealing their car to escape. All three will soon find themselves at the mercy of Han and his army of martial arts fighters as he protects his underground factory of narcotics and prostitution.

During filming of Game of Death, Bruce was offered the chance to film Enter the Dragon. So Bruce delayed the rest of the filming of Game of Death to make Enter the Dragon. Bruce died 3 weeks before Enter The Dragon was released and Game of Death was shelved. Only later did the studio come back and finish the movie as a tribute to Bruce Lee.
Game of Death

Bruce Lee plays Billy Lo, a HongKong based movie actor, who is a box office draw. His girlfriend, Ann Morris is a singer who is also climbing to the top. Now it seems the syndicate wants Billy and Ann to join their "management firm". But Billy knows that they will be treated like property, so he refuses and tells her to do the same. So they try to "encourage" him to join but he still refuses. He would be advised that they will not stop, so he must stop them, permanently. He is even more hesitant to do that but when an attempt on his life is made, he fakes his death and alters his appearance, and decides to go after the syndicate; taking them out one at a time.

Often find your self wondering who owns the Bruce Lee name and who gains any income from his name? I was wondering that same thing the other day, so I went and looked it up! It is his daughter and his wife! Guess that was kind of obvious huh!

Who owns the copyright to Bruce Lee's Legacy?

Concord Moon LP, the Los Angeles-based company of Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee's daughter) and Linda Lee (Bruce Lee's widow), owns all rights to exploit Bruce Lee's name, likeness, trademarks and works "Concord Moon is in the process of opening another office in Beijing now," announced Managing Partner, Shannon Lee.

Bruce Lee has many famous quotes. This Bruce Lee Quote here is one of my favorite.

Bruce Lee Quote:

Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him.

Bruce Lee would use those cool Chinese verbs and talk in riddles sometimes. He was good at not revealing the true meaning of what he was saying! His words would make you try to study what he just said, and make you think about it to get what he was talking about!

Listed below are some quotes from Bruce Lee himself!

Bruce Lee about his goals he wanted to achieve

I, Bruce Lee, will be the highest paid Oriental superstar in the United States. In return, I will give the most exciting performances and render the best quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting in 1970, I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1989 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. Then I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee about being dedicated

Dedication, absolute dedication, is what keeps one ahead-a sort of indomitable obsessive dedication and the realization that there is no end or limit to this because life is simply an ever-growing process, an ever-renewing process.

Bruce Lee on his own personal growth

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function of and duty of a quality human is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.
I have come to discover through earnest personal experience and dedicated learning that ultimately the greatest help is self-help-doing one's best, dedicating one's self wholeheartedly to a given task, which happens to have no end but is an on-going process.

Bruce Lee Quote: Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being "wholly" and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
The danger of training with the heavy bag is that it doesn't react to one's attack and sometimes there is a tendency to thoughtlessness. One will punch the bag carelessly, and would be vulnerable in a real situation if this became a habit.

"A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard"

"I have not invented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that" method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see "ourselves". . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organized institution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don't, and that is that. "

Bruce Jun Fan Lee was born in the hour of the Dragon, between 6 and 8 a.m., in the year of the Dragon on November 27, 1940 at the Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco's Chinatown. Today, a plaque in the hospital's entry commemorates the place of his birth. Bruce's birth, in the hour and the year of the Dragon, is a powerful symbol in Chinese astrology. It would be a strong omen of the powerful life that was to be lived by Bruce Lee and
the explosive impact his life would have on countless others.

Bruce was the fourth child born to Lee Hoi Chuen and his wife Grace Ho. He had two older sisters, Phoebe and Agnes, an older brother, Peter, and a younger brother, Robert. Lee Hoi Chuen was, by profession, a comedian in the Chinese opera and an actor in Cantonese films. At the time Bruce was born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were on tour with the opera company in the United States. Thus, it was fortuitous for Bruce's future that his birth took place in America, as he would return 18 years later to claim his birthright of American citizenship.
Bruce Lee Quote Poster
Bruce's parents gave him the name "Jun Fan." Since it is Chinese custom to put the surname first, Bruce's full name is written Lee Jun Fan. The true meaning of Jun Fan deserves an explanation as it, too, would foretell the journey of the newly born Lee son. Literally, JUN means "to arouse to the active state" or "to make prosperous." It was a common middle name used by Hong Kong Chinese boys in those days, understandably because China and the Chinese people were very vulnerable at that time, and everyone, including Bruce's parents, wanted the "sleeping lion of the East" to wake up. The FAN syllable refers to the Chinese name for San Francisco, but its true meaning is "fence of a garden" or "bordering subordinate countries of a big country." During the period of the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911), many Chinese immigrated to Hawaii and San Francisco as laborers, and the
implication became that the United States was FAN of the Great Ching Empire. Thus the true meaning of Bruce's name--JUN FAN--was "to arouse and make FAN (the United States) prosperous." The gut feeling of many Chinese at that time, who felt suppressed by and inferior to foreign powers, was that they wished to outshine the more superior countries and regain the Golden Age of China. Bruce's parents wanted Bruce to have his name shine and shake the foreign countries, which he certainly succeeded in doing.

The English name, BRUCE, was given to the baby boy by a nurse in the Jackson Street Hospital although he was never to use this name until he entered secondary school and began his study of the English language. The story goes that on the first day of English class, the students were asked to write down their English names, and Bruce, not knowing his name, copied the name of the student next to him. His family almost never used the name Bruce, especially in his growing up years when his nickname in the family was "SAI FON," which literally means Little Peacock. This is a girl's nickname, but in being applied to Bruce, it had a serious purpose. The first-born child of Mr. and Mrs. Lee had been a boy who did not survive infancy. Their belief was that if the gods did not favor the birth of a male child, the babe might be taken away. Thus, the name, Little Peacock, was used as a ruse to fool the gods into thinking that Bruce was a girl. It was a term of great affection within the family circle.

At the age of three months, Lee Hoi Chuen, his wife Grace and baby Bruce returned to Hong Kong where Bruce would be raised until the age of 18. Probably because of the long ocean voyage and the change in climates, Bruce was not a strong child in his very early years, a condition that would change when he took up the study of gung fu at the age of 13. (Bruce always spelled his Chinese martial art as GUNG FU, which is the Cantonesepronunciation of the more commonly spelled Kung Fu, a Mandarin pronunciation.) Bruce's most prominent memory of his early years was the occupation of Hong Kong by the Japanese during the World War II years (1941-1945). The residence of the Lee family was a flat at 218 Nathan Road in Kowloon directly across the street from the military encampment of the Japanese.

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On Aug. 19th 2008, this lens was given the chance to shine for a few days and was spotlighted on the LOTD Blog! It was a great honor to be picked for the award! If you like my lens about The Little Dragon Bruce Lee, please leave a comment below and don't forget to leave some stars at the top of the page!

Accomplishments for this Bruce Lee Page
Purple Star awarded on April 16th, 2009
Lens of the Day winner on Aug 19th 2008!
Highest rank achieved: #1 overall
(5 times!)

Poll #1 - Who was Bruce Lee's 1st martial arts teacher?
Yip Man
Poll #2 - What s your favorite Bruce Lee Movie?
Personal Opinion!!

Poll #3 - Whereabouts was Enter the Dragon filmed?
Tai Tan Bay, Hong Kong

Poll #4 - Why did Bruce Lee take up martial arts?
He got beaten up in a street fight!

Poll #5 - When Was Bruce Lee Born?
27th November 1940