The Bruce Lee versus Wong Jack Man duel is the most controversial fight in martial arts history. It occurred in 1964 in Oakland, California, and is still hotly debated in martial arts circles. Now it is the centerpiece in a new Hollywood film, BIRTH OF THE DRAGON.

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON was on track to premiere late last year after a successful debut at the prestigious 41st Toronto International Film Festival. We were ready. We went to press with the lead actor Philip Ng on the cover of our November+December 2016 issue. Philip, playing the coveted role of Bruce Lee, is a lifelong Kung Fu practitioner, and an old friend of Kung Fu Tai Chi. Before becoming a Hong Kong movie star, he wrote for us and even participated in our online discussion forum. So not only did he give us unprecedented access for our cover story, Birth of the Dragon: A Kung Fu Nerd Becomes Bruce Lee, he provided material for two additional exclusive online interviews: Philip Ng on Making It in Martial Arts Movies and Philip Ng on Working on Martial Arts Movies in Hong Kong. If you want to know more, check out those articles.

But then BIRTH OF THE DRAGON hit some snags. Without even seeing the film, web critics began accusing it of whitewashing because the initial trailer focused largely on the Caucasian actor Billy Magnussen, who plays Steve McKee, a character loosely based on Bruce Lee’s real life friend, Steve McQueen. Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon called the film "a travesty" and "a step backward for Asians in film." The premiere was delayed indefinitely, making our cover story hit the newsstands a year too early. It was as if the Little Dragon himself fought back from the grave and said, “What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. Try again.”

The Duel Between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man

Only three people are alive today who bore witness to the duel. One is Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce Lee’s widow, who has stalwartly maintained that Bruce was the victor and that the fight was about Bruce teaching Kung Fu to non-Chinese. Another is Grandmaster David Chin, who was our July+August 2006 Cover Master. In that cover story, Keeping Secrets: Grandmaster David Chin’s Legacy of Hop Gar Rebels and Guang Ping Tai Chi Revolutionaries, Grandmaster Chin discusses his involvement in the duel. And the last is Grandmaster Wong Jack Man himself.

Grandmaster Wong has a reputation for reclusiveness. Although many only know him as the master that fought Bruce Lee, Grandmaster Wong persisted, teaching quietly in San Francisco for nearly half a century and producing many notable masters and students. He is a proponent of a traditional style of Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, commonly known from the Cantonese dialect as Bak Sil Lum. In BIRTH OF THE DRAGON, Wong is depicted as a full-fledged Shaolin monk in monastic robes, but in truth, he was never a monk at all. Bak Sil Lum is a non-monastic style of Kung Fu that descends from Shaolin Temple. Most practitioners of that style do not take any sort of Buddhist vows.

Philip Ng had the opportunity to meet him as he’s been present for this production. “I met Master Wong Jack Man when I was filming in San Francisco,” shares Philip while crossing the country on the BIRTH OF THE DRAGON promotional tour. “That was the first time I’d met him. He’s a very quiet gentleman. He was nice enough, and also his students were there. And also I met him at the premiere in L.A. and San Francisco. I didn’t really get the chance to talk to him too much but he was a very nice gentleman and his students were very nice as well. Obviously they have their version of the story and it’s interesting to hear both sides – or the many sides with all the different witnesses there telling slightly different versions.”

The duel has already been depicted before in previous Bruce Lee biopics. Linda Lee Cadwell gave her blessing to a thinly-veiled interpretation of the duel already in the highly-fictionalized biopic, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993). In that film, Bruce fights a secret duel in Oakland against the fictional Johnny Sun over training non-Chinese. Lee faces Sun again in a later scene set at Ed Parker’s tournament. Likewise, Shannon gave her blessing to a 50-episode CCTV biopic series in 2008 called The Legend of the Bruce Lee. In that series, Bruce fights an "official match" in Oakland against the fictional Yellow-skinned Brat over training non-Chinese. The match is ordained by the fictional Chinese Martial Arts Association, the president of which is played by Master Sun Jiankui (March+April 2014 cover master), and it is interupted because Linda goes into labor. They fight a rematch too, although not at Parker's tournament. Lee fights Chuck Norris there, played by Ray Park (July+August 2016 cover master). In both versions blessed by the family, the Wong character is depicted as extremely villainous and the first encounter ends with Bruce being hospitalized and then taking revenge in the rematch. In truth, Lee only faced Wong once and Wong has an upstanding reputation in the Chinese martial world.

There are other versions of the duel. It has been discussed in numerous Bruce Lee books and articles. Rick "Bucky" Wing, one of Grandmaster Wong's students and a frequent freelance contributor to Kung Fu Tai Chi, wrote a book, Showdown in Oakland: The Story Behind the Wong Jack Man – Bruce Lee Fight. On top of that, Jeremy Arambulo did a graphic novel version just last year titled, The Challenge. And journalist Charles Russo published Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America, which addresses martial arts in America as a whole, but focuses greatly upon the duel. That was through the scholarly publishers, University of Nebraska Press.

Given so many interpretations, what actually happened at that duel remains controversial and might give any martial artist pause to tackle the subject again. But not Philip. He was more concerned with portraying Bruce. “The only trepidations that I might of had taking this role is that I’m playing such a documented legendary person, someone that I’ve looked up to and someone that I wanted to honor. And I have heard about the fight. I knew about the fight between Bruce and Wong Jack Man quite a long time ago. And since my father is a Kung Fu teacher, he actually has a friend that was one of the witnesses of the fight. Upon hearing his version of what happened in the fight, it was both contradictory and it does coincide with things that I’d read. One thing that I do know, based on my research, is that this fight is very controversial with the outcome – what happened in the fight, how long it took, and so forth – being highly contested. But one thing that is for sure, Bruce Lee came out of this fight realizing his limitations and he evolved a new way of thinking about the martial arts which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do, which changed the landscape of martial arts forever. This can be seen in popular culture today, in combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts and so forth. His idea is that style is not something that someone should adhere to like dogma. A person should take what’s useful for them and discard what’s useless, and be pragmatic. And I think because MMA fighters today, they don’t get paid for defending a style, regardless of what method they do, they get paid for winning. So that theory of being pragmatic and taking what’s useful, and discarding what’s not useful based on the individual, it’s really well illustrated in sports like MMA today.” At the begining of the U.S. promotional tour, Philip and George Nolfi presented a plaque to San Francisco's Chinese Hospital where Bruce Lee was born.  The Chinese Hospital is over a century old and remains the only Chinese hospital in the United States. A special San Francisco screening of BIRTH OF THE DRAGON benefitted that hospital on the day of the plaque presentation. 

 

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON

Like with so many knee-jerk naysayers nowadays, those early reactionary criticisms were unfounded. After a year of cooling off and some minor adjustments to the film, BIRTH OF THE DRAGON is generating good buzz over its premiere. “This version of BIRTH OF THE DRAGON,” reveals Philip, “the difference between this version and the version that was shown at TIFF wasn’t that big actually. I just recently did a radio interview where the host actually thought I shot additional scenes as Bruce Lee to fill in the gaps of this movie. Actually, I did not. What happened was a lot of people assumed. It might have been from the initial controversy with the first trailer. But it’s not the case. What happens in American movies is that they will test it. They will spend money and bring audiences in to watch versions of the movie and adjust it based on what people want to see. I remember contacting George Nolfi, the director, as this process was going on. And it was universally agreed that people really liked the character of Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man in this movie. They really wanted to see more of them and focus on them, and less of everybody else.”

As for whitewashing, Philip Ng and Yu Xia, who plays Wong Jack Man, are the lead roles. Obviously, they are not white. “The movie,” offers Philip, “out of its twenty-three cast members that are listed, twenty-two are Chinese. I think that’s unprecedented in a Hollywood movie. So I think people who support diversity in film, and having Asian Americans in Western cinema, really need to support this movie in droves. But this movie is a movie about human beings. And I think Bruce Lee himself transcends race or nationality. Bruce is a superhero that I think everyone wants to be and everyone admires.” As a side note for martial arts fans, BIRTH OF THE DRAGON also stars legendary martial actor and January+February 2007 Cover Master Yu Hai, and one of the world’s leading Chen Taijiquan exponents, Grandmaster Wang Xian.

“And another thing that people need to keep in mind,” adds Philip, “that this is not a documentary. It’s a Kung Fu fable, or fan fiction, if you will. It’s based on a real event but embellished and created to be cinematically exciting but still authentic to the characters which this movie is based on. I think when the audience goes in with this mindset, they will really enjoy themselves as I’ve noticed in the two screenings that have happened, one in L.A. and one in San Francisco. Every comment I heard was that this is a fun movie and everyone enjoyed the fight scenes. And thank God, everyone enjoyed my performance as Bruce Lee, which let me to breathe out a sigh of relief. So I think people need to go in the theaters on August 25th and give this movie a chance. And I know they will not be disappointed.”