Bruce Lee statue – when Mostar beat Hong Kong to the punch by 24 hours
- Kung fu film star – picked because of his popularity among Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs – has been immortalised globally
- Bosnian bronze unveiled a day before Hong Kong’s in 2005 but fan club were ‘happy to see that others share our love of Bruce’
Where is the world’s first Bruce Lee statue?
Perhaps Hong Kong? Not quite. While the city’s most famous son and his worldwide renown, even 47 years after his death in 1973, is in evidence in his statue on the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui, that was not the first.
That statue, which stands at 2.5 metres tall and depicts Lee in a pose from hit film Fist of Fury, was sculpted in bronze by Cao Chong’en and unveiled on November 27, 2005, the 65th anniversary of Lee’s birth.
Funded by the Hong Kong-based Bruce Lee Club, which raised US$100,000 to fund it, rather than the government, it was unveiled by Lee’s brother Robert.
It quickly became a tourist favourite – or at least it was until the Covid-19 pandemic stopped visitors to the city – and a landmark to the extent that it featured on the Hong Kong episode of several international editions of The Amazing Race.
Since then there have been several other statues around the world to memorialise the kung fu star, who died in Hong Kong aged 32 from a cerebral edema.