📍218 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong
1941 – 1959“I was born in San Francisco in 1940, while my father, the Cantonese opera star Lee Hoi-chuen, was on tour in America, and when I was a few months old we returned to Hong Kong. We lived in a small flat above shops at 218 Nathan Road in Kowloon, a crowded home shared with family, relatives and even pets, on one of the busiest streets in the city. I grew up through the Japanese occupation and the hard years that followed, and Nathan Road, with its traffic, markets and noise, was my playground. Because of my father, I was in front of the camera almost as soon as I could walk. I appeared in around twenty films as a child, often playing street kids and tough little rascals, so I grew up as a famous face in Hong Kong. I was also restless and quick to fight. I was expelled from La Salle College and moved to St Francis Xavier's, where a teacher channelled my energy into boxing, and I won the inter-school championship. In 1954 a friend introduced me to the wing chun master Ip Man, and I trained obsessively with him and his senior students. I also loved dancing, and in 1958 I won the Hong Kong cha-cha championship, keeping a notebook of more than a hundred steps. In 1959, after one fight too many, my parents sent me to America with a hundred dollars to make a new start. In Seattle and California I studied philosophy, taught martial arts and created Jeet Kune Do, and then returned to Hong Kong to make The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon. The discipline, movement and showmanship I learned in Kowloon shaped everything, and Hong Kong honours me with a statue on the Avenue of Stars.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today