“A producer said he wanted me to play ‘a Chinese.’ You know, I mean, here I am a Chinese – and, not being prejudiced or anything but thinking realistically, how many times in film is a Chinese required? And when he is hired, I immediately could see the part – pigtails, chopsticks and “ah-sos,” shuffling obediently behind the master who has saved my life… I told [the Producer] “Look, if you sign me up with all that pigtail and hopping around jazz, forget it.”

Nobody would have thought that a hip, jive-talking cat from China would ever hold cultural prominence in the United States of America in the 60’s and 70’s. And nobody would have thought that a 5’8, gangly youth, would eventually sculpt his body into the defining image of physical fitness. Yet he did all of these things.

And for every impersonator that came in his wake, his image just seemed that much stronger, that much more secure. Bruce Lee was forever.
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