On the list of the coolest places to learn kung fu, Bruce Lee’s home would be near the top, right up there with secluded mountain top temple.
And there’s a chance that might happen.
The Hong Kong home of the martial arts superstar will be renovated and transformed into a Chinese cultural studies center, according to reports.
The charitable trust which owns the Kowloon Tong property located at 41 Cumberland Road plans to use it to teach Mandarin and music and, one day, martial arts, according to Oriental Daily.
With the mansion having fallen into disrepair, the trust hopes to have it fixed and open by September next year, said Pang Chi-ping, the sole trustee of the trust founded by his late grandfather, billionaire philanthropist Yu Pang-lin.
Pang said the renovation works would preserve the building’s edifice and the mosaic completed by Lee on an outer wall.
It’s expected to be able to teach to up to 400 children a year and may in the future offer martial arts classes.
The center, however, will not use the name of Bruce Lee, as the trust doesn’t own the rights to his image.
The kung fu film superstar, who also taught martial arts, was born in the United States and lived in Hong Kong as a child before returning to America aged 18.
He lived in the the Kowloon Tong mansion with his family in the years before his early death in 1973, at the age of 32, according to the SCMP.
The newspaper reported that Pang’s grandfather — who moved to Hong Kong from Hunan province in 1958 and worked as a toilet cleaner before making a fortune in the hotel and property business — bought the house in the early 1970s for about HK$1 million (US$175,500).
Plans to sell it in 2008 to raise money for victims of the Sichuan earthquake were abandoned after fans urged him to preserve and restore the building which, at the time, was being used as a short-stay love hotel.
According to Oriental Daily, the chairman and founder of the Bruce Lee fan club has long lobbied to use the site as a memorial to the star.
He said that Yu later proposed transforming the mansion into a Bruce Lee museum complex, but that he and the government failed to reach a consensus on that.
Surely having young aspiring martial artists learn kung fu in his home would be a fitting tribute to Lee’s legacy.
Reader Interactions