was largely accidental - Lee Hoi was touring the USA with a production of The Drunken Princess. The baby was called Lee Jun Fan, meaning 'return again'. A strong intuition told his parents that this son would one day come back to America to live. It was most likely a nurse at the hospital where Grace gave birth that suggested an English Christian name for the baby's American birth certificate and so he became Bruce Lee.
             Bruce Lee appeared in his first film, a Hong Kong production called The Beginning of a Boy, at six years old and began learning kung fu in 1949 after being bullied at school. Lee was not a fan of school, his grades were mediocre, he was uninterested and inattentive and was expelled from several schools for disruptive behaviour. 'So, like other Hong Kong Chinese kids, he turned to the streets to find his identity.' At the age of 18, when he was already beginning to create his own form of martial art, he was arrested for an assault on a boy from a rival kung fu school. His family decided the best plan of action was to send him back to his birthplace - back to America.
             After setting up several schools teaching kung fu, Lee caught the eye of television producers who cast him as Kato, the sidekick in the TV show The Green Hornet. He became relatively popular in America, but in Hong Kong he found real fame. He was the 'proverbial local boy made good' and early in 1971, he received an offer from Raymond Chow, the head of Golden Harvest Studios, of $15,000 for two films. Although Lee's heart was set on cracking Hollywood, with a young family the money was sufficient to convince Bruce Lee to return to Hong Kong and satisfy his Eastern fans.
             The contemporary Hong Kong industry dates back to about 1949 when Chinese film-makers migrated from Shanghai just before the Communist takeover. Alex Ben Block makes the argument that 'with the right distribution almost any action or se...