Aug 11, 2015 My Bruce Lee Pilgrimage in Seattle
My family and I vacationed in the PacNW last week, and our final stop was Seattle. There, my parents, wife, daughter, and I wound up dedicating our entire last day to Bruce Lee. It actually didn’t start off like that. We went to the Lake View Cemetary to take flowers to my wife’s great grandfather’s grave. But we knew that Bruce and Brandon Lee were buried there, too, and brought some extras as offerings.
We walked over to the side-by-side graves just as two other groups were leaving. I actually got a little tingly thinking Bruce Lee’s remains were right there. Is that how Catholics feel when they visit relics? A teenager who was sitting on the bench facing the tombstones got up and told us, “You can sit here. It’s awesome.” What other Chinese dead guy would get that sort of respect from a white kid?
Bruce Lee was a badass who crossed all boundaries. Guys like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen have made some rad kung fu movies since Lee died at the young age of 32 in 1973, but no one has come close to being as hip or deep as he was. He was the Cha Cha King and a philosophy major at UW before he became a martial arts master, writer, actor, or filmmaker who made Chinese culture cool. The only other athlete I can think of who compares in terms of social impact, raw intellect, and moral fiber is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar–and he was one of Lee’s disciples!
There’s actually a Bruce Lee exhibit at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown going on right now. We paid a visit and it was awesome to see so many of his hand-written notes and old photos, as well as interviews with Linda Lee, Taky Kimura, and Dan Inosanto. But it seemed a little like an infomercial with so much reference to Bruce Lee Enterprises and without testimonial from people outside the Jeet Kun Do Nucleus. The no-photos policy was lame, too. Why even have a #doyouknowbruce hashtag?
I appreciate the Lee family sharing their story and understand the importance of keeping personal notes private, but fans like us should at least be able to take photos by the bronze bust or the wall of of magazine covers from around the world. My friend Jeff Chinn, who lent many artifacts from his world-famous collection of Bruce Lee memorabilia, said that he wasn’t even allowed to take a picture in front of his stuff on display! This is the first of three Bruce Lee-related shows, and I hope policies will be be tweaked and perhaps there will even be contributions from a wider range of participants that might include Kareem, Stephen Chow, or even the guys from LMF in the future.
Afterward, we walked down the hill to Tai Tung for lunch. According to our museum tour guide, it was was one of Bruce Lee’s favorite restaurants and the only one that still exists. When you enter the Chinese restaurant, reflective letters from a hardware store announce it as Seattle’s oldest and the menu is indeed old school with Cantonese favorites like tomato beef chow mein and American Chinese dishes like egg foo young.
In one of the videos that is shown at the Wing Luke Museum, Linda Lee shares that her late husband tried to get her to learn how to cook Chinese food, and that his favorites included beef with oyster sauce and shrimp with black bean and garlic sauce. Tai Tung didn’t have the latter but we ordered the former. Eloise liked it a lot!
But we were even more interested in checking out the table where Bruce Lee would sit. The spot is lit by Christmas lights and enshrined with a row of photos, some posters, and a cutout. The host told us that fans from all over the world come to Tai Tung to have their photos taken, and offered to take ours. We couldn’t say no and I sat in every chair, just in case it was The One.
If you visit Seattle for Bumbershoot or the Modern Sky Seattle Festival, don’t forget Bruce. I think we might dedicate a day to Jimi next time we’re in the area…
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