EPISODE 77: Bruce Lee (Part 1)

History on Fire

Daniele Bolelli

Society & Culture

4.8 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2022

⏱️ 133 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Energy is eternal delight.” — William Blake

“Hong Kong in the 1950s was a depressed place. Post–World War II Hong Kong had suffered from unemployment, a poor economy, over-crowding, homelessness, and people taking advantage of each other. Gangs roamed the street, and juvenile delinquents ran rampant.” — Hawkins Cheung

“Teachers should never impose their favorite patterns on their students—he said—They should be finding out what works for them, and what does not work for them. The individual is more important than the style.” — Bruce Lee

“I feel I have this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all of these combined…” — Bruce Lee

Ask anyone for one name they associate with martial arts, and odds are they will mention Bruce Lee. Because of his career, millions of people were introduced to martial arts. Thanks to his movies, Lee achieved enduring, worldwide fame, broke plenty of box office records, and forever changed the aesthetics of action films. Not bad for a skinny kid from Hong Kong who arrived in United States with the proverbial shirt on his back. The image of his hyper-muscular body in combat pose has become iconic. But there was a lot more to Bruce Lee than meets the eye. He could have been a rock star or a spiritual leader or anything else he had wished… Martial arts was just a channel for his energy. Had he put that same energy anywhere else, he’d have probably had similar success. Despite Hollywood turning him down time and time again due to racial prejudices, Lee refused to take no for an answer and more or less single-handedly changed the way in which Asian people were perceived in the West. His philosophical insights also changed the face of martial arts training, and introduced masses of people to Taoism and Zen Buddhism. His creative & anti-authoritarian approach to life captured the best of the essence of the 1960s. Get ready for a ride because this is an incredible story I have wanted to tell since I first started podcasting.

This episode covers Bruce Lee’s life from birth to his famous fight with Wong Jack Man in 1964.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Shannon Lee and whether you like history or not, if you care about
0:05.4	bravery, wisdom, passion, larger-than-life characters and some of the most
0:10.2	emotionally intense moments in human experience like I do, you have come to the
0:15.2	right place. Danny Ellible-Elly is a university history professor, writer,
0:20.0	martial artist, and a friend of mine, and he will be your guide in a journey to the
0:25.3	place where history and epic collide. Please enjoy this episode of History on
0:31.7	Fire all about my father, Bruce Lee.
0:37.8	Let's go to History on Fire. I'd love to dedicate this episode to those
0:57.2	closest to me whose lives have been impacted by Bruce Lee. My daughter is a
1:02.4	belle, sovandariam, Roberto Bonomelli, Marc Chang, Pete McCormack, and of course
1:09.0	Bruce's daughter, Shannon Lee. I remember the first time I was introduced to
1:16.5	Bruce Lee's work. I must have been maybe seven, eight years old, maybe nine at
1:23.4	the most somewhere around there, and Bruce Lee showed up in my living room on a
1:28.5	tiny TV, barely bigger than what most computer screens look like today, that
1:34.4	only broadcasted three or four channels max. I forget which one of his movies I
1:40.6	was watching, but uncertain it was the first martial arts movie I'd ever seen,
1:46.1	and first feel my ever seen starring a nation actor. At that time it would have
1:53.8	been really hard to imagine that now so many years later I would be still
2:00.3	talking about that guy. Even in more recent times, Bruce Lee has played a rather
2:06.9	important role in my life. My first book which was published in Italy when I was
2:11.8	in my early 20s and was about philosophy of martial arts featured an image of
2:18.1	Bruce Lee on the cover. Fast forward about 15 years and I ended up featured on
	...

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