AARON SHORT May 8, 2014 - LISTVERSE
....10: Bruce Lee Was Sent To America To Stop His Street Fighting
Just like a superhero, Bruce Lee has an origin story. Lee grew up on the streets of Hong Kong in the ’50s. At this time, British-owned Hong Kong was flooded with people trying to escape the repressive communist Chinese government, leading to overcrowding. This meant that Hong Kong was overrun with homelessness, poverty, and crime. As a child, Lee was in a gang called The Tigers Of Junction Street. Unfortunately, The Tigers Of Junction Street weren’t a very good gang and ended up getting beaten up pretty badly more than a few times. One day, 13-year-old Bruce arrived home with a black eye and asked for karate lessons. His mother said yes, and Bruce ended up with a mentor, the semi-legendary kung fu teacher called Yip Man.
Just like a superhero, Bruce Lee has an origin story. Lee grew up on the streets of Hong Kong in the ’50s. At this time, British-owned Hong Kong was flooded with people trying to escape the repressive communist Chinese government, leading to overcrowding. This meant that Hong Kong was overrun with homelessness, poverty, and crime. As a child, Lee was in a gang called The Tigers Of Junction Street. Unfortunately, The Tigers Of Junction Street weren’t a very good gang and ended up getting beaten up pretty badly more than a few times. One day, 13-year-old Bruce arrived home with a black eye and asked for karate lessons. His mother said yes, and Bruce ended up with a mentor, the semi-legendary kung fu teacher called Yip Man.
Most of what Bruce learned from Yip Man would be utilized in street fights. Lee carried knives and chains with him and would often challenge or straight up attack other gangs. Lee was fearless at this age, once attacking and beating up the son of a known Triad member. Eventually, his parents decided that he would be better off out of the country and had to bribe the police to have him taken off a list of known troublemakers so that he could travel to America.
9: Bruce Was The 1958 Hong Kong Cha-Cha Champion
Before leaving Hong Kong, Bruce had picked up a skill. Besides being one of the greatest martial artists who ever lived, Bruce was also talented in another, perhaps more surprising field—cha-cha dancing. Apparently, Bruce took up the hobby a year after he started taking serious kung fu lessons. At first, cha-cha dancing was just a way to impress a girl, but he soon became pretty good at it. He also found that practicing dancing could improve his footwork and balance and soon invested his crazy focus in dancing as well as kung fu—it’s said that Bruce always carried a card containing more than 100 individual dance steps that he could flip through.
9: Bruce Was The 1958 Hong Kong Cha-Cha Champion
Before leaving Hong Kong, Bruce had picked up a skill. Besides being one of the greatest martial artists who ever lived, Bruce was also talented in another, perhaps more surprising field—cha-cha dancing. Apparently, Bruce took up the hobby a year after he started taking serious kung fu lessons. At first, cha-cha dancing was just a way to impress a girl, but he soon became pretty good at it. He also found that practicing dancing could improve his footwork and balance and soon invested his crazy focus in dancing as well as kung fu—it’s said that Bruce always carried a card containing more than 100 individual dance steps that he could flip through.
At 18, he was so good at dancing that he won a competition to become the cha-cha champion of Hong Kong. To further illustrate how just how good he was, when Bruce was traveling to America with only $100 in his pocket, he made extra cash by teaching some of the wealthy American passengers how to dance.
8: The Wong Jack Man Fight....
For the full article by Aaron Short:
Aaron is a film student and freelance writer. You can talk to him on Twitter.
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