The Bruce Lee effect

Not that I like to smear the name of the dead


But


TCG hates Bruce Lee.

Namely as Bruce Lee managed to get TCG beaten up A LOT in school. Note that the areas TCG grew up are not exactly Representative of the UK. Where Children carry Uzis and we have places called Little Beirut or Gang banger alley or rape city.

He also got my parents beaten up lots of times and a lot of my peers beaten up a lot too.

Quite simply people would watch a Bruce Lee or Bruce Li, Lea, Lie, Law,Lo etc etc etc film and think all Chinese people could fight like that. Therefore they would start fights against you. But because they thought you were hard and you could kill them in an instant they would fight you in very large gangs. At the end of Enter the Dragon, the bad guys conveniently queue up one by one to be dispatched by Bruce. In real life they rush in and beat you to a pulp. TCG is on first name terms with the doctor who would reset my nose every few weeks while I was a teenager.

I did however learn to fight eventually and even though I was beaten to a bloody pulp after standing up to them they soon stopped and grew out of it. Back in the 1970s Just before Bruce died something would happen to my dad (who did work in restaurants before going onto driving a van for a short spell) and his friends. Though not so much in Cornwall as my dad and his mate used to brew lots of cheap beer.

Anyway big beefy Rugby types think Jonah Lomu sized blokes



Would come into restaurants eat shit loads. They would then walk out when a waiter attempted to stop them they would say some shit like.

"If you can knock us out we'll pay you."

They would then start a massive fight trashing the place for the hell of it. Bruce Lee copied this real life story for the film Coliseum. Until three things happened. The Chinese community really did start fighting back. I have a story whereby I'll tell you in person, but it is about a man with a hammer and three big beefy blokes who ended up eating through straws for the rest of their lives. And also when a Wushu master came from Guangzhou and there came a rep that Chinese people fight back.... which incidentally placed the Bruce Lee effect on ME and my Chinese peers.

However all the people who stayed in HK and China during this time still look up to him (in some ways) because of the stardom. But they never experienced the wave of violence he admittedly inadvertently caused many overseas Chinese. Though of course this might just have been strong picking on weak, but when people growl at you like Bruce did on the silver screen there is a connection there too!

Though curiously James Kim the Korean guy I met from New York said Koreans suffered much in the same way when he was younger. Though it was more that they seemed to be weak and the strong tend to pick on the weak again. Though I can only name one Korean Martial arts star Hwang Jang Lee who always got killed by Jackie Chan in almost all of his appearances.

The Joy Luck Club

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Anyone who loves things China needs to read this book. Written by Chinese American author Amy Tan, it is the story of four women who emigrated from China to give their daughters a better life. Each month the four women get together to talk and play Mahjong. They describe in detail each of their lives and hardships they faced as they grew up in China and eventually make their way to the US. It then tells the story of each of their daughter’s lives and the much different struggles they endure. The first one of the women was sold to a family as a bride at the age of fifteen, the second was forced to see her mother suffer and kill herself, dying before her eyes, the third was terribly abused by a man she thought she loved. She killed their infant son because it was the only thing she could take from him and cause him pain. She kept this horrible secret to herself. The fourth mother was forced to abandon her twin babies, unable to endure the burden of carrying them all the way south to safety as she fled the escalating violence of the Sino-Japanese war. The daughters had different issues. The first one wanted to please her husband, but lost her self in doing so. The second daughter’s family did not like her fiancé. The third daughter had the opposite problem; her fiancé’s family did not accept her. And finally, the fourth daughter who is the half-sister of the two babies abandoned by their mother must go to China to inform her sisters of their mother’s death. The hard lives of the mothers influenced how they raised their daughters. They all shared a common wish to give their daughters more opportunity and a better life in America. The relationships between the mothers and daughters are complicated, often strained; old ways verses new. The daughters struggling to balance their American lives while respecting the culture of old so desperately being kept alive by their mothers.

The book was also made into a film in 1993 and honestly, it is the only film that has ever brought tears to my eyes.

I can think of no better film to describe the life and hardships of Chinese American Immigrants in the early 20^th century. It is a film that I believe every Chinese American should see. Generations old and new. This is one of very few films that has touched my heart, and I hope it touches yours as well.

3rd Generation

Dear TCG

I'm curious, do overseas Chinese (I'm 3rd generation Chinese American) get the same preferential treatments like other foreigners (caucasion) do? For example, Chinese women going for foreigners because money and leaving China for a better pasture etc.

Frog Splash.


Dear Frog.

What do you mean by preferential treatment? I'm uncertain. Are you saying because you have an American passport you are more desirable to women in China?

I would say possibly however because you look the same. TCG curiously if stood in a line of Chinese people even though I look similar everybody can see that I don't really belong curious eh? The women won't go looking for you as the lets say more motivated women will when looking for Caucasians who are obviously not Chinese. Therefore even though you may be more desirable it doesn't mean you will be spotted. What is hidden cannot be seen.

I would note the architype of submissive femenine women is about as accurate as your piss after 10 pints of Carlsberg special brew. I won't name names though!

Enough fucking around though!

My own personal experience has been effectively YES as long as they know you are not a local... as said in my recent past I have been treated like a piece of meat even by HK women from not fantastically wealthy backgrounds as a good catch or somebody to bring them better opportunities than they would have in HK/China.

OTOH As I said in another post earlier on, you may well suffer racism comments such as banana I'm sure you've heard before. But the racist abuse from Chinese everywhere against other Chinese is.....shall we say several magnitudes harsher.

However this desirability comes with a terrible price.... I ranted a lot and got bored but suffice to say: Deng Xiao Ping's famous quote

"no matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. "

Is a complete and utter lie.