Bruce Lee

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Bruce Lee was born November 27, 1940 in San Francisco. At age 14, Bruce Lee entered La Salle College in Hong Kong, a high school. He attended St Francis Xavier's College from 1957-1959. In 1959, Bruce got into a fight with a feared Triad gang member's son. His father became concerned about his safety and Bruce was sent to the United States to live with an old friend of his father's. All he had was $100 and the title of 1958 Crown Colony Cha Cha Champion of Hong Kong. After living in San Francisco, he moved to Seattle to work for Ruby Chow, another friend of his father's. In 1959, Lee completed his high school education in Seattle and received his diploma from Edison Technical School. He enrolled at the University of Washington as a Philosophy major. There he met his future wife Linda Emery. Bruce and Linda married in 1964 and had two children together, Brandon Lee (born 1965) and Shannon Lee (born 1969). Bruce Lee died July 20, 1973 in Hong Kong.

Lee was a martial artist, instructor, actor, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts system. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and famous martial artists of all time. He is also widely known as the greatest icon of martial arts cinema and a key figure of modern popular culture. In the martial arts folklore, he is considered by many to be the greatest martial artist of all time, including karate legend Joe Lewis and Davis Miller.

Lee's films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level and sparked a greater interest in Chinese martial arts in the West. Lee also became iconic to the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese national pride and Chinese nationalism in his movies. His pioneering efforts paved the way for future martial artists and martial arts actors such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chuck Norris, bringing martial arts films and actors to the mainstream.

Many see Lee as a model blueprint for acquiring a strong and efficient body as well as developing a mastery of martial arts and hand to hand combat skills. Lee began the process of creating his own fighting system known as Jeet Kune Do. Bruce Lee's evaluation of traditional martial arts doctrines is now seen as one of the first steps into popularizing the modern style of mixed martial arts.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.org article "Bruce Lee". Please see the original article for references and footnotes.

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