A Bruce Lee Hong Kong sightseeing tour – visit where the martial arts icon lived, filmed, trained and went to school with this DIY guide

Aug 12 , 2020

Bruce Lee’s statue on display at the Garden of Stars by Victoria Harbour in Tsim Sha Tsui – the only one in Hong Kong to recognise the martial arts film star. Photo: SCMP

Stockholm has Abba The Museum, Liverpool hosts a Beatles-themed Magical Mystery Tour and Elvis fans still flock to Graceland in Memphis – so why is there no Bruce Lee museum in Hong Kong, the city he called home? To rectify that oversight, we made our own

Bruce Lee has been hailed as the best martial artist of his time and was the first Hong Kong Chinese actor to break into Hollywood – starring as Kato in The Green Hornet, before going on to film a series of genre-defining martial arts classics. He was named by Time as one of the most influential people of the 20th century, yet despite his iconic status it is surprising there are no permanent exhibitions dedicated to the star in Hong Kong – a hole all the more aching following the close last month of the “Bruce Lee: Kung Fu ‧ Art ‧ Life” exhibition after a seven-year-run at Sha Tin’s Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

Abba has a museum in Stockholm, Elvis has Graceland in Memphis and the Beatles have a museum dedicated to them in Liverpool – and if you want to walk in their footsteps, there is the Magical Mystery Tour which takes fans to the places where the Fab Four lived, hung out and found inspiration behind their timeless song.

With that in mind, STYLE cooked up our very own “Way of the Dragon” tour of Hong Kong to discover where Bruce Lee lived and drew energy, and even though many of the buildings have now gone, you can still walk in his footsteps.

The Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. Photo: SCMP

Garden of Stars

The first stop would have to be a stroll along the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront at the newly relaunched Garden of Stars, in front of K11 Art Mall. The Hong Kong Bruce Lee Club paid for and erected a statue of Lee on what was originally the nearby Avenue of Stars, in 2005 on what would have been Lee’s 65th birthday.

The bronze statue sees Lee in his ready to strike stance as seen in his 1972 Fist of Fury movie. Sadly, this is the only tourist site the city has of its best known international icon.

Junction of Nathan Road and Gascoigne Road in 1950, just a few blocks away from Bruce Lee’s family home. Photo SCMP

218 Nathan Road

Just a 10-minute walk from the waterfront, in the Jordan area of Nathan Road, is a small mall called the Prudential Centre, on the corner of Tak Shing Street and Nathan Road. This is the spot where Bruce Lee lived in the 1940s and 1950s when his family came back from California just after he was born.

Back then 218 Nathan Road was the residental Katherine Building and the Lee family lived on the second floor until Lee left for California in 1959. Katherine Building was torn down in the 1970s for MTR construction.