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Bruce Lee

Haji 2003

Entry posted by Haji 2003

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The man was a background celebrity in my childhood. His name had become synonymous with martial arts, but I don't think I've seen any of his movies. Anyway, I had a spare couple of hours to kill in the Tai Wai district of Hong Kong and saw signs for the Heritage Museum, so I thought I'd pay a visit.

It says something about Hong Kong that such a rich colony only got such a museum well after the British left.

This special, temporary exhibition is really well done, it takes up one of the three floors of the museum. It charts Bruce Lee's childhood (born in Hong Kong and then emigrated to the U.S.) and shows how his career developed. You get to see all the equipment he trained with and even more interestingly the books that he read. That was a real eye-opener. There are texts on Chinese history and philosophy as well as ones on business and personal success. You get a real feel for someone who wanted to develop himself physically, spiritually and focus that on building a business. He developed his own martial art and there are notes about what ideas underpinned this.

It gets better. The exhibition documents how we used his martial arts expertise to train Hollywood stars and get into that industry. There are beautiful, directorial handwritten notes he made on how he wanted his movies shot. His sketches of fight sequences reminded me of Rodin. He was also a prolific letter writer and you get some feeling for his networking through his communications. I understand that he's revered, almost worshipped in some parts, obviously, he was much more than many of today's athletes.

He died young and there is some controversy about his death and I've read on Quora that he must have been taking steroids, which wasn't illegal in those days.

It's a really neat exhibition and given its high production values I guess it will be touring various other museums around the world at some stage.

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Allah Seeker

Allah Seeker 150

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his son was also killed in a very controversial setting, as the star actor of the movie 'The Crow' .. they killed him while filming one of the scenes.

There was a lot of hatred towards him because he changed the image of the Chinese as the weak poor man, to a man who liked to kick white people's behinds on screen. He was supposed to be the main actor of the TV series 'Kung Fu', but they cast a more caucasian looking guy in the end. And that even though Bruce's mother is half German. So I believe that he became a political force that had to be eliminated according to the people in power at the time. Just like his son in a movie that ironically depicted him as coming back to avenge his own death, as well as his love's death, after being killed.

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Haji 2003

Haji 2003 16,668

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Yes, you are right, there was a racial undercurrent in terms of both the reaction to him and his desire to overcome it.

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The Green Knight

The Green Knight 8,672

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Another reason to kill him would have been that his films were undermining Hollywood, since he had decided to film them in Hong Kong and they were really a class of their own at the time.

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wmehar2

wmehar2 656

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Considering his body mass, I don't think he did take steroids.  He didn't exhibit (at least physically) any of the major signs of Steroid/Testosterone abuse.

Also, brain Edema isn't characteristic of one (he died from an brain edema) of the negative side effects of steroids.

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