Enter The Museum; Exit The Brothel: Bruce Lee's Home Finally Rescued

After a very long running struggle, the green light has finally been given to preserve the one-time residence of the Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee. Until now, the 5,700 square foot, two story town house located in the suburbs of Kowloon, Hong Kong has served some members of the community as a "love motel" where rooms can be rented hourly to amorous couples.

After Lee's death in 1973 and the return of his family to the United States, the property was bought by the Shenzen based hotel tycoon, Yu Pang-Lin who claims that after he purchased the house for 850,000 HKD, he sought to sell it a few years later with no success but now wishes to promote tourist attraction and turn it into a museum to honor the film icon. The plans for the museum which will reportedly raise the property value to somewhere over 100 million HKD, will include recreating parts of the home such as Lee's study and training hall stacked with martial arts weaponry (some of which will be donated by his wife Linda Lee Caldwell) with a library, martial arts center and movie theater to be added.

Wong YiuKeung, Chairman of the Bruce Lee fan club, said that while the government of Hong Kong will of course be pleased to benefit from the added boost to tourism that the new museum will generate, little has been done to commemorate the legend. "Lots of tourists in the past have wanted to visit the house. I always had to tell them to get a partner of the opposite sex in order to get in," he said.

All in all, I am glad that Bruce's old home will finally be saved from the ignomous end which had befallen it for the past couple of decades but the new plans still seem to be a long way from being finalized. Yu Pang-Lin who is now 88 years old and claims that his wish is to see the museum completed before his passing is now the one that is holding up progress as he has added new plans which insist that the museum will only be built if he can expand the site to include 30,000 square feet of retail. This has not been met with enthusiasm by the Antiques and Monuments Office of Hong Kong (don't know where they were when it was a love shack) nor by Lee's exasperated fans causing a new deadlock.


Images obtained from www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00796/Lees-house