Today, I visited Bruce Lee’s ancestral home.
To me, Bruce Lee was never just a martial artist. He was a signal.
For Chinese kids growing up in the Western world, he was proof that we could be strong, charismatic, and undeniable. Before conversations about representation even existed, Bruce Lee already stood there shirt off, eyes locked in, daring the world to see him on his own terms.
Growing up, everyone wanted to be Bruce Lee.
And then…. there was everything else.
There was a time when I didn’t want to be Chinese at all. When characters like Long Duk Dong taught the world how to laugh at us, not with us. When accents were punchlines and bodies were stereotypes. When being Asian felt like something you had to apologize for, shrink, or joke away before someone else did it for you.
Bruce Lee was the opposite of that.
“I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. “
Watching his films as a kid, I didn’t just want his speed or his power —I wanted his refusal. His unwillingness to bend into something smaller just to be accepted. I wanted to be what the world wasn’t expecting.
I wanted to be “the Asian who didn’t fit the script”.
In my head, Bruce Lee wasn’t about violence. He was about defense. About standing your ground. About choosing not to disappear. He made you feel like if the world came at you sideways, you didn’t have to fold —you could root yourself and respond.
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. “
Standing in his ancestral home today, I watched visitors move slowly through the space —young, old, Chinese, non-Chinese— all quietly absorbing what he left behind. No loud performances. No chest-thumping. Just respect. Just presence.
It struck me that Bruce Lee’s greatest legacy wasn’t his fighting.
It was identity.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it. “
He didn’t try to become what Hollywood wanted. He forced Hollywood to expand. He didn’t erase who he was —he sharpened it.
And decades later, people are still showing up.
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. “
Walking out, I realized something quietly important:
Bruce Lee didn’t teach us how to fight.
He taught us how to exist —fully, visibly, and without apology.
And that lesson still lands.