Bruce Lee: 10 more things you probably didn’t know about the Hong Kong martial arts superstar
- To celebrate Hong Kong kung fu legend Bruce Lee’s birthday, here are 10 lesser-known facts about the cultural icon
- Find out why he was called ‘Chicken Legs’ at school, why he took up kung fu and what car he bought when he first came into some money
Hong Kong martial arts superstar Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940. Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about him.
1. According to Matthew Polly’s in-depth biography Bruce Lee: A Life, Lee’s nickname at school was “Gorilla”. He acquired this slightly derogatory moniker because, as Hawkins Cheung, his school friend at St Francis Xavier’s School, remembered, “he was muscular and walked around with his arms at his sides”.
Most of the schoolkids were scared of Lee, but as Cheung was one of his closest friends, he made up his own nickname for him: he called him “Chicken Legs”, because of Lee’s muscular torso and apparently scrawny legs. Hawkins said that Lee used to get mad at him when he used this name and would chase him around the schoolyard.
2. Although he came from a middle-class home, the young Lee was a tearaway who loved street-fighting.
“As a kid in Hong Kong, I was a punk and went looking for fights,” he told Black Belt magazine. “We used chains and pens with knives hidden inside. Then, one day, I began to wonder what would happen if I didn’t have my gang behind me when I got into a fight.”
