Book review: fighting Bruce Lee and other stories from 4 decades of Chinatown history

Photojournalist Dean Wong’s book about the recent history of five American Chinatowns is a story of struggle, from Japanese-American Tak Kimura taking on the Hong Kong martial arts legend to Aids-wracked drag queen Ryan Rhine

Reading Time:3 minutes

Soldier Andy Cheng receives a hero’s welcome upon his return from combat in the first Gulf War. Photos: Dean Wong

Published: 12:15am, 11 May 2016Updated: 12:15am, 11 May 2016

3.5 stars

Imagine challenging Bruce Lee to a fight. After meeting the Hong Kong-raised prodigy in 1959 in Seattle, Japanese-American fighter Tak Kimura did just that.

“Kimura threw a punch. Missed. The young Chinese man sent his fists flying, stopping inches from Kimura’s face. ‘I could feel the blows coming to me,’ he remembered. ‘He could come so close I could feel the wind; it was enough to knock you back. He took me down. It was incredible. He was unbelievably talented,’” Kimura tells photojournalist Dean Wong, a story recorded in his four-decade pictorial look at Chinatowns in five American cities: Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver and Portland.

Like Kimura the fighter, who was interned on United States turf during the second world war because of his roots, almost every subject who graces Wong’s chosen canvas – Asian-Pacific America – has struggled.

Another wartime internee, Ted Munar, still broods over December 7, 1941: the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. Although Munar was just five, his friends turned on him and beat him up.