September 24, 2025 • 30 mins
In WATER MIRROR ECHO: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner Books; on sale 9/23/2025), award-winning author Jeff Chang delivers a groundbreaking cultural biography of Bruce Lee, timed to Lee's 85th birthday year in 2025. Drawing on thousands of personal documents (including letters, diaries, and rare photos) and exclusive, in-depth interviews with Lee's inner circle (including his first love, close friends, and early fighting mentors), Chang offers a stunning dual portrait: the complex human story of Lee and the extraordinary, untold story of the creation of Asian America. Through Lee's experiences, Chang charts the rise of Asian America as a powerful political and cultural force that endures to this day
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ah row, Michael, how are you doing today? All right,
my friend, I know this tour is right up your alley.
I wanted to say I sent you a text. I
don't know if you got it. I do, I could
give you more, Okay, kay, you can go more than twenty. Yeah,
you like excellent, excellent, Thank you so much. I want
to go thirty. You can go thirty, and then we'll
give Jeff a ten minute break. He's gonna have to
go do some martial arts. If he's gonna do thirty
with me, he's gonna have to go do something. Break
(00:21):
a couple of boards or something.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
All right, warm them up, Warm up those boards. Get
those boys ready to be broken.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Jeff, let's break. Let's break this down in the way
that I am a third degree black belt. And you
learn somewhere along the line, maybe a boat you on
that that you know it's not really about the kicking,
the blocking, the tournaments, the victories, the trophies and things,
and you start realizing this really is about community. And
that's the one thing that your book peels away at
is that it showcases what Bruce Lee did to the community,
(00:49):
and that is so important to me as a black
belt barrow.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You're just warming my heart. Man, I'm getting chills listening
to you. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
What did you practice or what do you.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Practice out in combat karate? But I kept getting my
butt kicked, broken ribs, broken arms, you know how it is.
And then and then so I went to taekwondo because
I wanted to kick to the head, and my sense
kept saying no, no, no, no, no. One day you're
going to be sixty four. The higher you're gonna kick
is the shin.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yes, yes, Sarah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, yeah, I'm yeah,
we're nearing that now. I'm sure I am.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
And but the thing about it is, though, is that
a lot of people and this is gonna prove this
book true. And we're gonna we're gonna you're gonna create
a mystery or a mystique vibe here because we're all
gonna wish what if he were still alive today? What
kind of a great man would he be? And how
would he be leading his community?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I think about that all the time.
I think about all, you know, the gap that he
left and and how we've.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Tried to fill it. So this is gonna be a
really great interview. I'm looking forward to this well.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
One of the things that and you know, maybe listeners
will kind of just roll their eyes over this, and
but I hope you understand. One of the biggest change
that Bruce Lee brought was the fact that a lot
of these martial arts schools in this country had karate
on the outside because you knew what the building was,
but if it truly had the martial arts name on it,
everybody thought it was a restaurant. And I just feel
(02:13):
like that Bruce Lee changed that that texture by saying, no,
you need to learn all forms and it does not
come with a restaurant attached.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, he broke down a lot of stereotypes for a
lot of people. I mean there's a lot of stories
about Bruce being in Hollywood and talking about go fu
to people and people going what kind of Chinese food.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Dishes that you know, and he'd show them and they'd
be stunned and you know, and wanting to sign up
to work with them.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So what did you learn on a project like this,
because I mean I get all mine from because in
martial arts in taekwondo, we had to do a thesis
every time that we had to do a black belt test,
so we had to dig into the history of mind,
which was a two thousand year old martial art. What
did you learn in digging into this?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I didn't. There's some do we have eight hours to
spend here together.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know that you can do it.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
The thing is is is you think you know Bruce
and then you really really don't. That's the thing is
every turn I started learning something new about him.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So I thought, you know, I'm part of the generation
that grew up where there was no Bruce before, you know,
for folks in the generation before me, But for me,
there was always Bruce.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You know, I grew up with Bruce. I'm like the
generation of my kids that always grew up with hip hop.
So so I thought I knew Bruce, and I started
learning a lot more about his early years, especially as
a teenager even before that, as as a kid growing
up in war torn Hong Kong, you know, surviving, struggling
(03:50):
to survive, and then becoming somebody who is wrapped up
in this teen fight culture. And I was just fascinated
by all of that. But you know the other part
of it too is you don't hear about what it
was like for him when he first got to the US,
and it was a struggle for him. It was really hard,
you know, he was having to live in racially segregated
neighborhoods and he you know, and he's working as a busboy,
(04:13):
as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and they're serving
the rich, you know, white clientele from up the hill,
and so he's really learning about what it means to
be a minority in the US. And I think that
that's something that's maybe underplayed in his story, but that's
where he becomes American, and I think that's why he
becomes the hero of the underdog.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Well, you know what the void that your book Watermerror
Echo brings to us is the fact that there's not
a movie out there really about Bruce that tells the
real story. And I think that's the reason why with
your book, I'm taking it so slow and I'm highlighting
the hell out of it. So you don't ask for
this book back unless you can handle some artwork in it.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, there's a lot. It's a big book.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I don't write short books too much, But there was
also a lot to tell about, you know, and I
think when you look at Bruce's life, it really tells
the story of what it means to be an underdog,
an immigrant, or a poor person, or somebody who's just
struggling to make it, you know, through life. Because his
(05:15):
entire life he struggled. We only know him as a superhero,
but he didn't even get to see his big success
when Ended the Dragon, you know, debut in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
He had passed on.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And so so really, you know, his whole life is
like pushing that rock up this really long high hill
and we.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Get to see the benefits of that all these years later.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You know, I'll tell you how how And this is
going to make a lot of people. Carench is that
there was a documentary back in the latter part of
the nineteen seventies into the eighties about Bruce Lee that
talked about that they're watching his gravesite because he always
said that he would escape from the dead and so
and so my entire life, I've sat there and I thought,
did he crack it? Yet? Did he do it? Did
he do it? I mean, they planted that so deep
inside my soul because I want him to come out
(05:59):
of there to be that guy.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You wanted, you know, you see him.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I can't imagine what it must have been like to
see Bruce at the premiere right and to know that
this guy had passed away just a month beforehand. But
he's so alive right on the screen. He's just so
full of it, so full of energy, so full of power,
and you want to be him. And I think that
that's fueled partly, you know, the the subsequent every generation
(06:25):
like trying to find their own Bruce Lee, trying to
find their own way to be like him.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You talk about, you know, the impact that he's had
in our lives. I've been with Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Let
me tell you what. Kareem is still touched by his
time with Bruce Lee two thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
He still talks about it all the time. I was
really you know, inspired, actually to find out how deep
their friendship ran. That they you know that they traded
books with each other, that Bruce was over here when
they took him out the Chinese restaurants. Everybody wanted Kareem's autograph.
He was the superhero in LA at that time, and
he was trying to protect Kareem. You know, from getting
(07:01):
mobbed by all these autograph seekers, because that's how Bruce
had grown up. You had grown up as a star,
as a child star, and Kareem had always been a
basketball star, so he knew. I think Kareem really intimately
that way. It's such a moving part of it. And
I have a whole chapter on Kareem in there, because
you know, you have to, you just have to. Their
(07:21):
relationship was so deep.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Well, and look at what Kareem Abdul Jabbar has done
with the community, which takes us right back to the
beginning of this conversation.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It's about community absolutely two thousand percent. You know, Kareem
has just put out this shoe, the Javar Low. All
the sneaker heads will know this, but he's got a
yellow and black shoes. There's a little Bruce Lee thing
at the bottom of it.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
But the thing that moves me is, you know when
he came out to bring it out a couple of
weeks ago, he went to Chinatown to do it, and
he spent a lot of time with the kids there
and he's obviously continued to do so much for the community.
It makes you think, right like, had he been able
to survive, Like, what would the two like be doing
(08:05):
right now, right in terms of trying to help the kids,
trying to uplift them, trying to give them inspiration. Kareem's
still caring on the work.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I got to tell you where I think that Bruce
Lee would be now. And I think it's all based
on what his choices were when it comes to the
martial arts, because everybody has always said, oh, he was
never a master in one certain martial art. You don't
have to be That's the thing about it. You don't
have to be a master at a certain art. And
I think that what he would say is, I need
you to go learn what you can, what you're willing
to learn, and put it all together in your own
journey so that you can have your own personal strength.
(08:39):
And people are left guessing.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, you know, he formed this thing called jiqu Kundo,
which he thought of as sort of a way to
be able to bring together all these different types of styles.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
He was a maverick. He was a maverick in that
way because he was.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Not of the mind that you taught these things and
you kind of kept them in your school and you
didn't teach anybody else, and in fact, if you're the seafood,
if you're the if you're the sense, you're maybe not
even teaching the students everything that you know because you're
only reserving certain kinds of stuff for for just a
couple of students. If even that, right, Bruce was like,
(09:16):
let it all out in the open. We're going to
test all of this, We're going to try it all out.
And he found like minded people that were coming, whether
they come from Hawaii or whether they were already mavericks
in Chinatown, because Hawaii had been mixing.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Up martial arts for two generations before Bruce.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But they're you know, they're getting together and they're forming
their own kind of thing. But ultimately, Bruce was like,
it's up to you, Like you learn all this type
of stuff and you figure out how it works on
your body. And that's what g Cando is ultimately right,
That's what he comes to as he grows through this
and you realize it's not a style. I'm not teaching
(09:54):
something that's going to be fixed. It's got to be
something that's growing that that you are continually adding to
that you're evolving, like you said, right, like we're nearing
our middle ages. If not there already, we're not gonna
be able to kick the way that we kick. I
just met a man who was Bruce Lee's, one of
Bruce Lee's best friends and students. He's ninety five. He's
(10:16):
still kicking a heavy bag every day. He's still doing it.
And I think that that's the kind of practice that
Brucell would have wanted for him to have, and for
all of us to be.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Able to have.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Please do not move. There's more with Jeff Chang coming
up next. The name of the book Water Mirror Echo.
We're back with Jeff Chang. The one thing people always
ask me if I could, would I go back and
interview Bruce Lee? And people are shocked by my answer
because I tell them no. What I would do is
I would like to stand on the sideline of a
mat and listen to him mumble. That to me would
(10:51):
be the greatest experience.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
M Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
You know, it's interesting there are not too many extent
public interviews of Bruce anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
He wrote prolifically.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, and he took lots and lots and lots of notes,
and some of his notes are taken for his writings.
And that's a whole other story. But but yeah, you know,
I agree with you. I think just being able to observe.
I think something like you and I know, like being
in the martial arts, like you might come in loaded
with all kinds of questions.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That's not what you're going to get. You're not going
to get answers, not right away.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You're going to have to be in the practice for
decades right to be able to get some of these
questions out. You may die of having still some of
those questions, and that's maybe how the practice should be.
But yeah, like as a teacher, you know, people puzzled
because he wasn't a linear teacher. He wasn't like you're
going to learn this lesson and then you're going to
learn that lesson. It was like you're going to come
(11:47):
in and you're going to try this, and.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You know, follow along with me.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And I think that those folks you know, who learned
in that kind of way still teaching that kind of
a way as well.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
You talk about him being a writer, but now inside
my heart, I'm thinking everything that I've ever read it
was always like Bruce will not keep a journal because
he doesn't want his enemy to know his life and
his style. And basically his choice of weapons if he
needs to use them, and so and so to have
this book, I'm going, Am I violating a rule here?
Can I please just start writing about my journey too,
since it seems like his is here?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
No, I think you got to you know, I think
that that's again like what everything was about that he
was teaching. You know that you've got to find yourself.
You've got to be able to express yourself. Yes, is
I think you know the words that he would have
used and find your highest expression, and then to be
able to share that with people. I was lucky, you know,
Shannon Lee, his daughter opened up the files, his papers
(12:42):
and his writings and that kind of thing to me.
So I got to see a lot of his private papers.
And you know it's true he did like he did
this thing when he got sick. He hurt his back
and he was on his back he couldn't move for
about three or four more and so during that time
he compiled these binders of what he thought was everything
(13:06):
that he knew up to that particular point. And these
binders are amazing, and he gave them to maybe like
a dozen friends, if even that, And he because these
are the folks that he thought would be able to
hold you know, this stuff should anything happen to him.
And you know, some parts of that have been made
public now, not all of it, but it was a
(13:30):
type of thing where he wanted people to follow their curiosity.
And so during his lifetime, you know, he had done
one instructional booklet and then after that he said, I'm
not going to finish these other books that have been
contracted for or put them out because he didn't necessarily
want people to get stuck and fixated on a particular
(13:53):
set of lessons, because then it becomes gospel and you
can't grow out of that, and he wanted people to
continue to grow.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
You can't learn it from a book. It's about experience.
When when you fall on your back and you have
no air in your lungs and yet there's still two
minutes left of that round. You got to get your
ass back up and you've got to do something.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
You got you have to find it within yourself, and
and you can't really teach that actually, right, you got
to You've got to encourage people and you got to
push them.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Uh. And so I think you know, in that way,
Bruce as a teacher.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think you're entirely right erro like being able to
watch him, be able to see what he would do
in certain kinds of situations, and then and then kind
of ponder, like, how would that apply to to me
in a certain situation that I might catch myself in.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I want to break down the book title. I know
I'm absolutely wrong, but this is what I feel from
my side. Water is flow, the mirror is the present,
and infinity and echo is study your past.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Hmm. You know, there's a lot of different meanings.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Bruce's you know, most famous saying, of course, is moving
bele like water. And it turns out right that's where
we get all this beewater, my friend, be like water.
But it comes from this Daoist text, and there's three lines.
It's moving, be like water, still, be like a mirror,
(15:13):
respond like an echo. And you know, for his entire life,
I think he discovered these lines probably when he was
about seventeen or eighteen years old, and for his entire
life he was trying to figure out how to apply
this to his life. And you know, so we all
hear the words be water, and you know, athletes have
taken it up. Corporate leaders have taken it up. Entire
(15:36):
social movements have taken it up, and they've kind of said, okay,
be Water's like being adaptable, right, being changeable, being not fixed,
being elusive, right, being able to go around if you
need to go around, being able to go straight if
you need to go straight. The interesting thing about his
life is that he never really got to explore the
(15:58):
ideas around.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Being a mirror or being like an echo.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And so in the book, you know, we kind of
explore when I say we, me and my editor, we
kind of explored how to think about his life in
this way, right, And being like Water was like him
trying to take on Hollywood. So him trying to find
a way to become who he really wanted to become,
which was somebody who could teach Asian fighting arts and
(16:26):
Asian philosophy to the broadest number of people, and using
the media platform, whether it be TV or movies, as
a way to be able to do that. You know,
so he encounters a lot of resistance, and so he's
he has to be like Water and moving in all
these different types of directions to fulfill that. But he
dies before he's able to really.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Be able to be still with himself. His last year
is really intense.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
He's not in a good place, and he passes away suddenly,
So you know, we're left to kind of ponder that
he like mirror a lot of people's millions and millions
of people's from millions and millions of people all around
the world, and generations of people like he's been able
to mirror their ambitions and their hopes and their dreams.
And his words still echo today, right they're echoing right
(17:15):
now with us. So that's sort of the way that
we broke it down. But the way you broke it down.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Is really nice. I really really like that, and I
like that it's open to all kinds of interpretations and meanings.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You speak of the way that he could walk toward
or he could walk around. That's why I would love
to have just taken a walk with him, because one
of the things that a lot of people don't realize
is that martial arts don't go looking for trouble. We
walk around. We do everything we can to stay away
from it. So to have a conversation with him while walking,
it'd be interesting to find out what our path would
be and what his eyes were seeing versus what he
was sharing through his lips.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Absolutely two thousand percent. I totally agree. And you know,
the other part of it is what does it mean
to be a warrior?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
What does it mean to have these skills and to
not use them? Right?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I think that that's something that really is befitting the
moment that we're in right now, where we've all kind
of been weaponized against each other, and is that the
right way that we need to be proceeding, you know?
And so so it's interesting I think, you know, we're
all called upon to fight in the moment, but what's
the right thing to do? I think that that's part
(18:22):
of like what we could learn from looking at Bruce's
life and looking at how he walked and what he
was seeing.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Did he see himself as a symbol of the entire people?
Because today we would call Bruce Lee an influencer.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I mean he's yeah, he's absolutely that. He continues to
influence millions of people. I don't know, you know, I
think that what I got to see from my particular
vantage point was insight into who he was when he
wasn't around people or when he was only with his
loved ones, And that was profound to me. You know,
(18:58):
I'm not sure if he I want to be careful
about how this I was going to say, where the crown.
I'm not sure if if he held his responsibility like
heavily all the time, you know, or if he held
it lightly. I tend to think that in the last
year of his life he was holding it really, really preciously.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
He was like, I have to be able to break
through in Hollywood because I need people to be able
to have a way to see us in a way
that is not stereotypical, in a way that's not denigrating
or dismissive.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I need to be.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Able to understand how people understand that we've had this
wisdom that we've passed down for thousands of years, and
that we've you know, we've got strength and power and
that we can you know, be that like that, and
I think as people have seen that it's become a
universal thing, right, Like when you share your individual struggle,
it becomes a universal struggle in a lot of ways.
(19:55):
That's the power of art, and that's the power of communication.
So you know, that's that's part of what I wonder about.
You know, if had even able to survive past thirty two,
like what he would have become, how he would have
stepped into the role of what he represents to so
many of us.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Wow, you bring up Hollywood again, and right away I
had to go back to a question that I kind
of set aside. But and it deals with the mirrors.
Once again, you said that he did not, you know,
have that experience of the mirrors, and yet with Hollywood,
every one of those cameras have mirrors in them. So
therefore I feel like that he stepped into those camera
mirrors in order to give us where we are here today.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I can see that. I can see that out for sure,
you know, And that's that's fun. Of the really interesting
things to me is like his last big fight scene
is in this hall of mirrors.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Oh right, oh god, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And it's frag and these mirrors are fragmented, right, They're
cut in these little slices, and so the image that
you see is delivering kind of elusive, elusive e l
usiv and elusive ill i il siv, which is a
(21:10):
word that Bruce like to use in his letters to friends,
that Hollywood was elusive, that it was illusioned, and so like,
how do you pick out what's real from what's fake.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I think that's like part of that last climactic big
battle is You've got Bruce fighting this character who's a
Fu Manshue character. He's like a stereotype of all the
evil ideas about Chinese people and Asian American people and
Asian people all around the world. And it's almost like
(21:42):
Bruce's job to go and defeat that. Right, and you
walk you see them walking through this hallo mirrors, and
you don't know what's real and what's fake. But he's
the one that emerges at the end, right, and he's
exhausted by this battle. It literally kills him. And so
I think about that a lot. I really really think
about that.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
One of the things that I've learned in my everyday
life is the fact that the way that first of all,
people today now say do not bow, and I'm going
I have to bow because that's the way that I
was trained, and people go, but but you can't do that,
that's offensive. How do you feel about that when you're
trained and you're trained to say yes, sir, yes, sir,
don't call me sir. And and so I mean, because
the way that we're trained as martial artists, because I
(22:22):
look at someone like Bruce Lee as being somebody I'm
playing by the rules, and so should you.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
M Yeah, I think you know. I come up. I'm
raised in a culture of respect. Right.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You respect your elders, You respect those who are wiser
than you. You respect people who who you know show
you love and empathy. Right And and you don't respect
people who are treating you badly. You don't respect people
who are denigrating you. You don't respect people who are
(22:54):
are are trying to figure out ways to slip you
you know, or or or you in any kind of
a way. And uh, and I think that that's part
of you know, what this warrior mentality is about, right Like,
You've you've got to be able to to to respect
and learn from the people that you can learn from,
(23:15):
and you can even learn from your enemies, yes, right
and in fact, right like, I think one of the
things about sparring for the first time is that that
right is that is that the person you're sparring with
is the one who's teaching you actually about yourself, right Like,
they're teaching you about like what your weaknesses are, what
(23:35):
you're where you're like not defending yourself.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right, they're also teaching you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
About like where you might have an edge or some power,
but they're your biggest teachers anyway. My point is is
that it's not about never bowing. It's about never bowing
to people who do not respect you.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yes, I think is what it is. And I think
that that's, you know, part of what the lesson of
this is.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
But also on the other side, to be capacious, to
be able to to realize that not everybody is your enemy, right,
that even those people who are slotted as your enemies,
they might be your opponents, but they're not your They
may not be your enemies.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I think there's a difference.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I've always thought that respect begins with the way that
you hand something to another person. I believe in the
two handed transfer and and and so many people that
understand what I'm doing respect that, But others go, what
are you doing.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
M.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
But you're showing respect, right, yeah, showing respect to somebody else. Absolutely,
you're giving that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
And I think again, at this particular point in the culture,
like we are not like respect is not a thing, right,
Respect is seen as weakness, and and I feel like,
that's part of why we've gotten ourselves into a little
bit of the mess that we're in.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yah, let me ask you this question. One of the
you know you were talking about you the first person
you ever sparred, and the one that I will never
forget is the first girl I ever sparred. And I
was like, I was so against that because I'm a
male pig, I guess. And the thing is my sense
I looked at me and he says, what you think
you can beat the girl? And he goes, and what
happens if that girl is out on the street and
a man attacks her and she's never had the practice,
(25:12):
get in that ring and shut up, just do your jone.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, I had the privilege of being able to be
in a clue that was run by by women and
and so uh so I got my butt kicked on
the daily in that and that was that was something
that was was really amazing to be a part of it.
And yeah, and absolutely, you know, like we get over
(25:39):
our chauvinism and and we get in there and we
really fight and we find out right, Yeah, that's the
beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, we're blessed with the opportunity to talk with a
lot of close family members and friends. What kind of
monsters did you wake up? And I don't mean that
in a bad way, because when you step into someone's
past and their experiences, you wake something up.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well, you know, I think there's a lot, right, you know,
there's nobody's a perrect person. Nobody's a perrect person.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And I think one of the things that I was
really stunned to learn was how vulnerable he was, right,
how insecure he was really at all kinds of different
points in his life. Yeah, And you know, sometimes it
was because he had written these things in Chinese, which
I don't read, but I have an amazing translator, and
she'd be reading this and we'd be talking about it
(26:31):
together and I'd be like, wow, Like he was really
at a downpoint at that particular point. So give you
an example, Right, Bruce is somebody who grows up in
Hong Kong. He's on the one hand, a movie star,
he's like a teen idol. He's really a handsome dude. Right,
He's a chot shot king. You know, he's got a
(26:51):
lot of ladies that are chasing after him. And on
the other hand, he has sort of a taste for blood.
You know, he likes getting punched. You know, he likes
punching and getting punched, right, which we know something about, right,
and so he has in the extreme, so he loves
street fighting. He's in a fight culture in Hong Kong
(27:13):
at the same time that he's a movie star, you know,
and he's trying to protect his face. He's trying not
to get his hit in the face. His friends are
trying to like remind him, hey, man, you know, watch out.
We want to make sure that you get to the
next you know movie set on time without a black
and blue you know eye. But he gets into one
too many fights, and so his parents send him away.
(27:35):
They're like, you were born in the US. We're going
to send you back to the US, right, and we're
giving you one hundred bucks. So you're gonna have to
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And what was staying to me, I was I'm reading
his letters at that particular point when he's on the
boat this three week journey across the Pacific, and he
is scared, you know, he's like, wow, like I barely
know English because I haven't been paying attention to my
English classes.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
They teach it, you know, they teach English in Hong Kong.
It's British colonies, right, but he hasn't been paying attention.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So he's like, I barely know the language, and I
don't know anybody there, and I have no friends.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
All my friends are here. Everything that I know is here,
you know. And so he's writing these notes to himself
that are literally these idioms, these old Chinese sayings, yes,
you know, that are like like, hey, like you mess
around too much and stuff, you'll make a fool of yourself.
And there's another one that's in there that's like forgive others,
(28:36):
but never forgive yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
You know. They're just really really harsh, you know, Chinese sayings,
right like that he's using to kind of motivate himself
and to buck himself off and to be like okay,
like I've really got to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
But also, you know, just to it's just a reflection,
I think, on his state of mind at that particular point.
So he he goes through different periods. There's another time
when he's like trying to break into Hollywood and he's
finding that nobody's giving him any kinds of jobs, you know,
and so he's turning to self help books American self
help books. Yes, he's trying to visualize what success could
(29:14):
look like, you know. And so a lot of biographers
they read this and like, oh, he was an ego case.
He was like always on it. He always like had
this idea that he was going to be a star,
and that's why he became a star, which I think
is a very American way to look at things. I
looked at it as like, wow, like.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
He is so unsure about the future that he's over
here training his mind like he trains his body. He's
training his mind every day to say, this is what
I'm focused on, and I'm going to stay focused on this.
So yeah, So it's those kinds of things kind of
just blew me away. You know. It gives you an
idea of the human like underneath the legend.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
See, that's why you can't stop at a black belt.
You got to keep growing, because to me, it's like
the alphabet. Each belt is a letter in the alphabet.
One day you'll be able to write a sentence and
then a paragraph, and then you've got a book like yours.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Wow, I appreciate that. That's a really, really huge compliment.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
God, thirty minutes is still not enough with you dude,
where can people go to find out more? I mean,
come on, that felt like only three minutes, and you
know it's like what.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I'd love to talk with I'd love to talk with
you for hours, man. I know that we could. I
really know that we could.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Watermerror Echo dot net is my website and I have
an Instagram account at Zentronics.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
You got to come back to the show anytime in
the future. You know, the door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Man. I'd love to. I'd love to. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Okay, yeah you too, man. Thank you
Ah row, Michael, how are you doing today? All right,
my friend, I know this tour is right up your alley.
I wanted to say I sent you a text. I
don't know if you got it. I do, I could
give you more, Okay, kay, you can go more than twenty. Yeah,
you like excellent, excellent, Thank you so much. I want
to go thirty. You can go thirty, and then we'll
give Jeff a ten minute break. He's gonna have to
go do some martial arts. If he's gonna do thirty
with me, he's gonna have to go do something. Break
(00:21):
a couple of boards or something.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
All right, warm them up, Warm up those boards. Get
those boys ready to be broken.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Jeff, let's break. Let's break this down in the way
that I am a third degree black belt. And you
learn somewhere along the line, maybe a boat you on
that that you know it's not really about the kicking,
the blocking, the tournaments, the victories, the trophies and things,
and you start realizing this really is about community. And
that's the one thing that your book peels away at
is that it showcases what Bruce Lee did to the community,
(00:49):
and that is so important to me as a black
belt barrow.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You're just warming my heart. Man, I'm getting chills listening
to you. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
What did you practice or what do you.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Practice out in combat karate? But I kept getting my
butt kicked, broken ribs, broken arms, you know how it is.
And then and then so I went to taekwondo because
I wanted to kick to the head, and my sense
kept saying no, no, no, no, no. One day you're
going to be sixty four. The higher you're gonna kick
is the shin.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yes, yes, Sarah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, yeah, I'm yeah,
we're nearing that now. I'm sure I am.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
And but the thing about it is, though, is that
a lot of people and this is gonna prove this
book true. And we're gonna we're gonna you're gonna create
a mystery or a mystique vibe here because we're all
gonna wish what if he were still alive today? What
kind of a great man would he be? And how
would he be leading his community?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I think about that all the time.
I think about all, you know, the gap that he
left and and how we've.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Tried to fill it. So this is gonna be a
really great interview. I'm looking forward to this well.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
One of the things that and you know, maybe listeners
will kind of just roll their eyes over this, and
but I hope you understand. One of the biggest change
that Bruce Lee brought was the fact that a lot
of these martial arts schools in this country had karate
on the outside because you knew what the building was,
but if it truly had the martial arts name on it,
everybody thought it was a restaurant. And I just feel
(02:13):
like that Bruce Lee changed that that texture by saying, no,
you need to learn all forms and it does not
come with a restaurant attached.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, he broke down a lot of stereotypes for a
lot of people. I mean there's a lot of stories
about Bruce being in Hollywood and talking about go fu
to people and people going what kind of Chinese food.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Dishes that you know, and he'd show them and they'd
be stunned and you know, and wanting to sign up
to work with them.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So what did you learn on a project like this,
because I mean I get all mine from because in
martial arts in taekwondo, we had to do a thesis
every time that we had to do a black belt test,
so we had to dig into the history of mind,
which was a two thousand year old martial art. What
did you learn in digging into this?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I didn't. There's some do we have eight hours to
spend here together.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know that you can do it.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
The thing is is is you think you know Bruce
and then you really really don't. That's the thing is
every turn I started learning something new about him.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So I thought, you know, I'm part of the generation
that grew up where there was no Bruce before, you know,
for folks in the generation before me, But for me,
there was always Bruce.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You know, I grew up with Bruce. I'm like the
generation of my kids that always grew up with hip hop.
So so I thought I knew Bruce, and I started
learning a lot more about his early years, especially as
a teenager even before that, as as a kid growing
up in war torn Hong Kong, you know, surviving, struggling
(03:50):
to survive, and then becoming somebody who is wrapped up
in this teen fight culture. And I was just fascinated
by all of that. But you know the other part
of it too is you don't hear about what it
was like for him when he first got to the US,
and it was a struggle for him. It was really hard,
you know, he was having to live in racially segregated
neighborhoods and he you know, and he's working as a busboy,
(04:13):
as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and they're serving
the rich, you know, white clientele from up the hill,
and so he's really learning about what it means to
be a minority in the US. And I think that
that's something that's maybe underplayed in his story, but that's
where he becomes American, and I think that's why he
becomes the hero of the underdog.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Well, you know what the void that your book Watermerror
Echo brings to us is the fact that there's not
a movie out there really about Bruce that tells the
real story. And I think that's the reason why with
your book, I'm taking it so slow and I'm highlighting
the hell out of it. So you don't ask for
this book back unless you can handle some artwork in it.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, there's a lot. It's a big book.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I don't write short books too much, But there was
also a lot to tell about, you know, and I
think when you look at Bruce's life, it really tells
the story of what it means to be an underdog,
an immigrant, or a poor person, or somebody who's just
struggling to make it, you know, through life. Because his
(05:15):
entire life he struggled. We only know him as a superhero,
but he didn't even get to see his big success
when Ended the Dragon, you know, debut in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
He had passed on.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And so so really, you know, his whole life is
like pushing that rock up this really long high hill
and we.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Get to see the benefits of that all these years later.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You know, I'll tell you how how And this is
going to make a lot of people. Carench is that
there was a documentary back in the latter part of
the nineteen seventies into the eighties about Bruce Lee that
talked about that they're watching his gravesite because he always
said that he would escape from the dead and so
and so my entire life, I've sat there and I thought,
did he crack it? Yet? Did he do it? Did
he do it? I mean, they planted that so deep
inside my soul because I want him to come out
(05:59):
of there to be that guy.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You wanted, you know, you see him.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I can't imagine what it must have been like to
see Bruce at the premiere right and to know that
this guy had passed away just a month beforehand. But
he's so alive right on the screen. He's just so
full of it, so full of energy, so full of power,
and you want to be him. And I think that
that's fueled partly, you know, the the subsequent every generation
(06:25):
like trying to find their own Bruce Lee, trying to
find their own way to be like him.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
You talk about, you know, the impact that he's had
in our lives. I've been with Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Let
me tell you what. Kareem is still touched by his
time with Bruce Lee two thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
He still talks about it all the time. I was
really you know, inspired, actually to find out how deep
their friendship ran. That they you know that they traded
books with each other, that Bruce was over here when
they took him out the Chinese restaurants. Everybody wanted Kareem's autograph.
He was the superhero in LA at that time, and
he was trying to protect Kareem. You know, from getting
(07:01):
mobbed by all these autograph seekers, because that's how Bruce
had grown up. You had grown up as a star,
as a child star, and Kareem had always been a
basketball star, so he knew. I think Kareem really intimately
that way. It's such a moving part of it. And
I have a whole chapter on Kareem in there, because
you know, you have to, you just have to. Their
(07:21):
relationship was so deep.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Well, and look at what Kareem Abdul Jabbar has done
with the community, which takes us right back to the
beginning of this conversation.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It's about community absolutely two thousand percent. You know, Kareem
has just put out this shoe, the Javar Low. All
the sneaker heads will know this, but he's got a
yellow and black shoes. There's a little Bruce Lee thing
at the bottom of it.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
But the thing that moves me is, you know when
he came out to bring it out a couple of
weeks ago, he went to Chinatown to do it, and
he spent a lot of time with the kids there
and he's obviously continued to do so much for the community.
It makes you think, right like, had he been able
to survive, Like, what would the two like be doing
(08:05):
right now, right in terms of trying to help the kids,
trying to uplift them, trying to give them inspiration. Kareem's
still caring on the work.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I got to tell you where I think that Bruce
Lee would be now. And I think it's all based
on what his choices were when it comes to the
martial arts, because everybody has always said, oh, he was
never a master in one certain martial art. You don't
have to be That's the thing about it. You don't
have to be a master at a certain art. And
I think that what he would say is, I need
you to go learn what you can, what you're willing
to learn, and put it all together in your own
journey so that you can have your own personal strength.
(08:39):
And people are left guessing.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, you know, he formed this thing called jiqu Kundo,
which he thought of as sort of a way to
be able to bring together all these different types of styles.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
He was a maverick. He was a maverick in that
way because he was.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Not of the mind that you taught these things and
you kind of kept them in your school and you
didn't teach anybody else, and in fact, if you're the seafood,
if you're the if you're the sense, you're maybe not
even teaching the students everything that you know because you're
only reserving certain kinds of stuff for for just a
couple of students. If even that, right, Bruce was like,
(09:16):
let it all out in the open. We're going to
test all of this, We're going to try it all out.
And he found like minded people that were coming, whether
they come from Hawaii or whether they were already mavericks
in Chinatown, because Hawaii had been mixing.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Up martial arts for two generations before Bruce.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But they're you know, they're getting together and they're forming
their own kind of thing. But ultimately, Bruce was like,
it's up to you, Like you learn all this type
of stuff and you figure out how it works on
your body. And that's what g Cando is ultimately right,
That's what he comes to as he grows through this
and you realize it's not a style. I'm not teaching
(09:54):
something that's going to be fixed. It's got to be
something that's growing that that you are continually adding to
that you're evolving, like you said, right, like we're nearing
our middle ages. If not there already, we're not gonna
be able to kick the way that we kick. I
just met a man who was Bruce Lee's, one of
Bruce Lee's best friends and students. He's ninety five. He's
(10:16):
still kicking a heavy bag every day. He's still doing it.
And I think that that's the kind of practice that
Brucell would have wanted for him to have, and for
all of us to be.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Able to have.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Please do not move. There's more with Jeff Chang coming
up next. The name of the book Water Mirror Echo.
We're back with Jeff Chang. The one thing people always
ask me if I could, would I go back and
interview Bruce Lee? And people are shocked by my answer
because I tell them no. What I would do is
I would like to stand on the sideline of a
mat and listen to him mumble. That to me would
(10:51):
be the greatest experience.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
M Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
You know, it's interesting there are not too many extent
public interviews of Bruce anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
He wrote prolifically.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, and he took lots and lots and lots of notes,
and some of his notes are taken for his writings.
And that's a whole other story. But but yeah, you know,
I agree with you. I think just being able to observe.
I think something like you and I know, like being
in the martial arts, like you might come in loaded
with all kinds of questions.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That's not what you're going to get. You're not going
to get answers, not right away.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You're going to have to be in the practice for
decades right to be able to get some of these
questions out. You may die of having still some of
those questions, and that's maybe how the practice should be.
But yeah, like as a teacher, you know, people puzzled
because he wasn't a linear teacher. He wasn't like you're
going to learn this lesson and then you're going to
learn that lesson. It was like you're going to come
(11:47):
in and you're going to try this, and.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You know, follow along with me.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And I think that those folks you know, who learned
in that kind of way still teaching that kind of
a way as well.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
You talk about him being a writer, but now inside
my heart, I'm thinking everything that I've ever read it
was always like Bruce will not keep a journal because
he doesn't want his enemy to know his life and
his style. And basically his choice of weapons if he
needs to use them, and so and so to have
this book, I'm going, Am I violating a rule here?
Can I please just start writing about my journey too,
since it seems like his is here?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
No, I think you got to you know, I think
that that's again like what everything was about that he
was teaching. You know that you've got to find yourself.
You've got to be able to express yourself. Yes, is
I think you know the words that he would have
used and find your highest expression, and then to be
able to share that with people. I was lucky, you know,
Shannon Lee, his daughter opened up the files, his papers
(12:42):
and his writings and that kind of thing to me.
So I got to see a lot of his private papers.
And you know it's true he did like he did
this thing when he got sick. He hurt his back
and he was on his back he couldn't move for
about three or four more and so during that time
he compiled these binders of what he thought was everything
(13:06):
that he knew up to that particular point. And these
binders are amazing, and he gave them to maybe like
a dozen friends, if even that, And he because these
are the folks that he thought would be able to
hold you know, this stuff should anything happen to him.
And you know, some parts of that have been made
public now, not all of it, but it was a
(13:30):
type of thing where he wanted people to follow their curiosity.
And so during his lifetime, you know, he had done
one instructional booklet and then after that he said, I'm
not going to finish these other books that have been
contracted for or put them out because he didn't necessarily
want people to get stuck and fixated on a particular
(13:53):
set of lessons, because then it becomes gospel and you
can't grow out of that, and he wanted people to
continue to grow.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
You can't learn it from a book. It's about experience.
When when you fall on your back and you have
no air in your lungs and yet there's still two
minutes left of that round. You got to get your
ass back up and you've got to do something.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
You got you have to find it within yourself, and
and you can't really teach that actually, right, you got
to You've got to encourage people and you got to
push them.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Uh. And so I think you know, in that way,
Bruce as a teacher.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think you're entirely right erro like being able to
watch him, be able to see what he would do
in certain kinds of situations, and then and then kind
of ponder, like, how would that apply to to me
in a certain situation that I might catch myself in.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I want to break down the book title. I know
I'm absolutely wrong, but this is what I feel from
my side. Water is flow, the mirror is the present,
and infinity and echo is study your past.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Hmm. You know, there's a lot of different meanings.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Bruce's you know, most famous saying, of course, is moving
bele like water. And it turns out right that's where
we get all this beewater, my friend, be like water.
But it comes from this Daoist text, and there's three lines.
It's moving, be like water, still, be like a mirror,
(15:13):
respond like an echo. And you know, for his entire life,
I think he discovered these lines probably when he was
about seventeen or eighteen years old, and for his entire
life he was trying to figure out how to apply
this to his life. And you know, so we all
hear the words be water, and you know, athletes have
taken it up. Corporate leaders have taken it up. Entire
(15:36):
social movements have taken it up, and they've kind of said, okay,
be Water's like being adaptable, right, being changeable, being not fixed,
being elusive, right, being able to go around if you
need to go around, being able to go straight if
you need to go straight. The interesting thing about his
life is that he never really got to explore the
(15:58):
ideas around.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Being a mirror or being like an echo.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And so in the book, you know, we kind of
explore when I say we, me and my editor, we
kind of explored how to think about his life in
this way, right, And being like Water was like him
trying to take on Hollywood. So him trying to find
a way to become who he really wanted to become,
which was somebody who could teach Asian fighting arts and
(16:26):
Asian philosophy to the broadest number of people, and using
the media platform, whether it be TV or movies, as
a way to be able to do that. You know,
so he encounters a lot of resistance, and so he's
he has to be like Water and moving in all
these different types of directions to fulfill that. But he
dies before he's able to really.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Be able to be still with himself. His last year
is really intense.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
He's not in a good place, and he passes away suddenly,
So you know, we're left to kind of ponder that
he like mirror a lot of people's millions and millions
of people's from millions and millions of people all around
the world, and generations of people like he's been able
to mirror their ambitions and their hopes and their dreams.
And his words still echo today, right they're echoing right
(17:15):
now with us. So that's sort of the way that
we broke it down. But the way you broke it down.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Is really nice. I really really like that, and I
like that it's open to all kinds of interpretations and meanings.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You speak of the way that he could walk toward
or he could walk around. That's why I would love
to have just taken a walk with him, because one
of the things that a lot of people don't realize
is that martial arts don't go looking for trouble. We
walk around. We do everything we can to stay away
from it. So to have a conversation with him while walking,
it'd be interesting to find out what our path would
be and what his eyes were seeing versus what he
was sharing through his lips.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Absolutely two thousand percent. I totally agree. And you know,
the other part of it is what does it mean
to be a warrior?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
What does it mean to have these skills and to
not use them? Right?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I think that that's something that really is befitting the
moment that we're in right now, where we've all kind
of been weaponized against each other, and is that the
right way that we need to be proceeding, you know?
And so so it's interesting I think, you know, we're
all called upon to fight in the moment, but what's
the right thing to do? I think that that's part
(18:22):
of like what we could learn from looking at Bruce's
life and looking at how he walked and what he
was seeing.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Did he see himself as a symbol of the entire people?
Because today we would call Bruce Lee an influencer.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I mean he's yeah, he's absolutely that. He continues to
influence millions of people. I don't know, you know, I
think that what I got to see from my particular
vantage point was insight into who he was when he
wasn't around people or when he was only with his
loved ones, And that was profound to me. You know,
(18:58):
I'm not sure if he I want to be careful
about how this I was going to say, where the crown.
I'm not sure if if he held his responsibility like
heavily all the time, you know, or if he held
it lightly. I tend to think that in the last
year of his life he was holding it really, really preciously.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
He was like, I have to be able to break
through in Hollywood because I need people to be able
to have a way to see us in a way
that is not stereotypical, in a way that's not denigrating
or dismissive.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I need to be.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Able to understand how people understand that we've had this
wisdom that we've passed down for thousands of years, and
that we've you know, we've got strength and power and
that we can you know, be that like that, and
I think as people have seen that it's become a
universal thing, right, Like when you share your individual struggle,
it becomes a universal struggle in a lot of ways.
(19:55):
That's the power of art, and that's the power of communication.
So you know, that's that's part of what I wonder about.
You know, if had even able to survive past thirty two,
like what he would have become, how he would have
stepped into the role of what he represents to so
many of us.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Wow, you bring up Hollywood again, and right away I
had to go back to a question that I kind
of set aside. But and it deals with the mirrors.
Once again, you said that he did not, you know,
have that experience of the mirrors, and yet with Hollywood,
every one of those cameras have mirrors in them. So
therefore I feel like that he stepped into those camera
mirrors in order to give us where we are here today.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I can see that. I can see that out for sure,
you know, And that's that's fun. Of the really interesting
things to me is like his last big fight scene
is in this hall of mirrors.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Oh right, oh god, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And it's frag and these mirrors are fragmented, right, They're
cut in these little slices, and so the image that
you see is delivering kind of elusive, elusive e l
usiv and elusive ill i il siv, which is a
(21:10):
word that Bruce like to use in his letters to friends,
that Hollywood was elusive, that it was illusioned, and so like,
how do you pick out what's real from what's fake.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I think that's like part of that last climactic big
battle is You've got Bruce fighting this character who's a
Fu Manshue character. He's like a stereotype of all the
evil ideas about Chinese people and Asian American people and
Asian people all around the world. And it's almost like
(21:42):
Bruce's job to go and defeat that. Right, and you
walk you see them walking through this hallo mirrors, and
you don't know what's real and what's fake. But he's
the one that emerges at the end, right, and he's
exhausted by this battle. It literally kills him. And so
I think about that a lot. I really really think
about that.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
One of the things that I've learned in my everyday
life is the fact that the way that first of all,
people today now say do not bow, and I'm going
I have to bow because that's the way that I
was trained, and people go, but but you can't do that,
that's offensive. How do you feel about that when you're
trained and you're trained to say yes, sir, yes, sir,
don't call me sir. And and so I mean, because
the way that we're trained as martial artists, because I
(22:22):
look at someone like Bruce Lee as being somebody I'm
playing by the rules, and so should you.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
M Yeah, I think you know. I come up. I'm
raised in a culture of respect. Right.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You respect your elders, You respect those who are wiser
than you. You respect people who who you know show
you love and empathy. Right And and you don't respect
people who are treating you badly. You don't respect people
who are denigrating you. You don't respect people who are
(22:54):
are are trying to figure out ways to slip you
you know, or or or you in any kind of
a way. And uh, and I think that that's part
of you know, what this warrior mentality is about, right Like,
You've you've got to be able to to to respect
and learn from the people that you can learn from,
(23:15):
and you can even learn from your enemies, yes, right
and in fact, right like, I think one of the
things about sparring for the first time is that that
right is that is that the person you're sparring with
is the one who's teaching you actually about yourself, right Like,
they're teaching you about like what your weaknesses are, what
(23:35):
you're where you're like not defending yourself.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right, they're also teaching you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
About like where you might have an edge or some power,
but they're your biggest teachers anyway. My point is is
that it's not about never bowing. It's about never bowing
to people who do not respect you.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yes, I think is what it is. And I think
that that's, you know, part of what the lesson of
this is.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
But also on the other side, to be capacious, to
be able to to realize that not everybody is your enemy, right,
that even those people who are slotted as your enemies,
they might be your opponents, but they're not your They
may not be your enemies.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I think there's a difference.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I've always thought that respect begins with the way that
you hand something to another person. I believe in the
two handed transfer and and and so many people that
understand what I'm doing respect that, But others go, what
are you doing.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
M.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
But you're showing respect, right, yeah, showing respect to somebody else. Absolutely,
you're giving that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
And I think again, at this particular point in the culture,
like we are not like respect is not a thing, right,
Respect is seen as weakness, and and I feel like,
that's part of why we've gotten ourselves into a little
bit of the mess that we're in.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yah, let me ask you this question. One of the
you know you were talking about you the first person
you ever sparred, and the one that I will never
forget is the first girl I ever sparred. And I
was like, I was so against that because I'm a
male pig, I guess. And the thing is my sense
I looked at me and he says, what you think
you can beat the girl? And he goes, and what
happens if that girl is out on the street and
a man attacks her and she's never had the practice,
(25:12):
get in that ring and shut up, just do your jone.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, I had the privilege of being able to be
in a clue that was run by by women and
and so uh so I got my butt kicked on
the daily in that and that was that was something
that was was really amazing to be a part of it.
And yeah, and absolutely, you know, like we get over
(25:39):
our chauvinism and and we get in there and we
really fight and we find out right, Yeah, that's the
beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, we're blessed with the opportunity to talk with a
lot of close family members and friends. What kind of
monsters did you wake up? And I don't mean that
in a bad way, because when you step into someone's
past and their experiences, you wake something up.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well, you know, I think there's a lot, right, you know,
there's nobody's a perrect person. Nobody's a perrect person.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And I think one of the things that I was
really stunned to learn was how vulnerable he was, right,
how insecure he was really at all kinds of different
points in his life. Yeah, And you know, sometimes it
was because he had written these things in Chinese, which
I don't read, but I have an amazing translator, and
she'd be reading this and we'd be talking about it
(26:31):
together and I'd be like, wow, Like he was really
at a downpoint at that particular point. So give you
an example, Right, Bruce is somebody who grows up in
Hong Kong. He's on the one hand, a movie star,
he's like a teen idol. He's really a handsome dude. Right,
He's a chot shot king. You know, he's got a
(26:51):
lot of ladies that are chasing after him. And on
the other hand, he has sort of a taste for blood.
You know, he likes getting punched. You know, he likes
punching and getting punched, right, which we know something about, right,
and so he has in the extreme, so he loves
street fighting. He's in a fight culture in Hong Kong
(27:13):
at the same time that he's a movie star, you know,
and he's trying to protect his face. He's trying not
to get his hit in the face. His friends are
trying to like remind him, hey, man, you know, watch out.
We want to make sure that you get to the
next you know movie set on time without a black
and blue you know eye. But he gets into one
too many fights, and so his parents send him away.
(27:35):
They're like, you were born in the US. We're going
to send you back to the US, right, and we're
giving you one hundred bucks. So you're gonna have to
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And what was staying to me, I was I'm reading
his letters at that particular point when he's on the
boat this three week journey across the Pacific, and he
is scared, you know, he's like, wow, like I barely
know English because I haven't been paying attention to my
English classes.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
They teach it, you know, they teach English in Hong Kong.
It's British colonies, right, but he hasn't been paying attention.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So he's like, I barely know the language, and I
don't know anybody there, and I have no friends.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
All my friends are here. Everything that I know is here,
you know. And so he's writing these notes to himself
that are literally these idioms, these old Chinese sayings, yes,
you know, that are like like, hey, like you mess
around too much and stuff, you'll make a fool of yourself.
And there's another one that's in there that's like forgive others,
(28:36):
but never forgive yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
You know. They're just really really harsh, you know, Chinese sayings,
right like that he's using to kind of motivate himself
and to buck himself off and to be like okay,
like I've really got to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
But also, you know, just to it's just a reflection,
I think, on his state of mind at that particular point.
So he he goes through different periods. There's another time
when he's like trying to break into Hollywood and he's
finding that nobody's giving him any kinds of jobs, you know,
and so he's turning to self help books American self
help books. Yes, he's trying to visualize what success could
(29:14):
look like, you know. And so a lot of biographers
they read this and like, oh, he was an ego case.
He was like always on it. He always like had
this idea that he was going to be a star,
and that's why he became a star, which I think
is a very American way to look at things. I
looked at it as like, wow, like.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
He is so unsure about the future that he's over
here training his mind like he trains his body. He's
training his mind every day to say, this is what
I'm focused on, and I'm going to stay focused on this.
So yeah, So it's those kinds of things kind of
just blew me away. You know. It gives you an
idea of the human like underneath the legend.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
See, that's why you can't stop at a black belt.
You got to keep growing, because to me, it's like
the alphabet. Each belt is a letter in the alphabet.
One day you'll be able to write a sentence and
then a paragraph, and then you've got a book like yours.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Wow, I appreciate that. That's a really, really huge compliment.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
God, thirty minutes is still not enough with you dude,
where can people go to find out more? I mean,
come on, that felt like only three minutes, and you
know it's like what.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I'd love to talk with I'd love to talk with
you for hours, man. I know that we could. I
really know that we could.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Watermerror Echo dot net is my website and I have
an Instagram account at Zentronics.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
You got to come back to the show anytime in
the future. You know, the door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Man. I'd love to. I'd love to. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Okay, yeah you too, man. Thank you
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