THE LITTLE PHOENIX

14 October, 1893
Yip Kai Man 葉繼問, Bruce Lee's future Wing Chun "sifu", is born in Foshan, Guangdong Province in China and widely credited with ensuring the survival of the then-obscure art outside of China.

1900
Liang Zipeng 梁子鵬, a friend of Bruce Lee's father who was also his Tai Chi Ch'üan instructor, is born in Foshan, Guangdong Province in China. Liang's martial arts mastery and knowledge of Chinese philosophy would have an early influence on his friend's impressionable son.
Siu Hon Sang 邵漢生, "Uncle Siu", one of Bruce Lee's future martial arts mentors, is born in Foshan, Guangdong Province in China.

27 March, 1902
Bruce Lee's father, Lee Moon Shuen 李滿船, is born in the town of Jun'an, Guangdong Province in China - he later adopts the professional name of "Lee Hoi Chuen" as a popular entertainer in Cantonese Opera. A local urban myth persists to this day regarding Lee Hoi Chuen's origins.

12 December, 1907
Bruce Lee's mother, Ho Oi Yee 何愛瑜, "Grace", is born in Shanghai, China. Her exact date of birth is unknown, as is the identity of her English mother who was a mistress of Ho Kom-Tong - who came from one of the highly influential and wealthy members of Hong Kong's most prominent families.

1918
Fook Yeung 楊福, "Uncle Fook", a close family friend of Bruce Lee's father, and one of his son's most pivotal martial arts mentors, is born in Foshan, Guangdong Province in China.

31 January, 1920
James Yimm Lee, Bruce Lee's close friend, mentor and the second of only three Jun Fan Gung Fu instructors personally certified by him in the U.S., is born in Oakland, California.

12 March, 1924
Takauki "Taky" Kimura, Bruce Lee's close friend, confidante and one of only three Jun Fan Gung Fu instructors personally certified by him in the U.S., is born in Clallam Bay, Washington.

01 August 1927
The start of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong. This twenty-two yearlong battle would be halted during the Second Sino-Japanese War, as both sides united to fight against the Japanese Empire, only to resume once Japan's defeat seemed imminent.

08 May, 1935
Wong Shun Leung 黃淳樑, the "King of Talking Hands" and the most talented of Yip Man's students is born in Hong Kong; he would serve as Bruce Lee's primary sifu during the period he studied Wing Chun, and a benchmark for his own development as a fighter and martial artist.

15 October, 1935
Jesse Glover, Bruce Lee's first friend and "martial arts student" the U.S., is born in Seattle, Washington.

1936
Lee Han Kwang is born in Hong Kong, the Lees first child, but the infant boy dies less than a year later in 1937.

24 July, 1936
Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee's friend, collaborator and the last of the three Jun Fan Gung Fu instructors personally certified by him in the U.S., is born in Stockton, California.

07 July, 1937
The Second Sino-Japanese War is launched as the Japanese Empire overwhelm the Chinese Mainland, over 20 million casualties are recorded along with 15 million wounded by the end of conflict on the 9th September, 1945. A steady mass exodus of refugees arrives in Hong Kong, swelling the population of the tiny British Crown Colony to almost two million inhabitants by 1941.

02 September, 1937
The Great Hong Kong Typhoon of 1937 devastates the territory, killing 11,000 people and exceeding 140 miles per hour before instruments max out and malfunction. Massive tidal waves leave fish on the rooftops of even the highest buildings; fires break out which are fanned into infernos by the dying winds; stagnant flood waters and dead bodies in the aftermath, lead to outbreaks of cholera, malaria and typhoid which sweep across the populace.

17 June, 1938
The inaugural "Bowl of Rice Movement" is held in Chinatown in San Francisco, California, U.S., part of a nationwide effort in more than 700 cities to raise funds for those suffering in China from the Second Sino-Japanese War.

January 1939
Lee Chau Yuen, "Phoebe", is born Hong Kong and adopted by the Lees - she is long rumoured to the be the result of one of Lee Hoi Chuen's affairs - Bruce Lee was extremely close to Phoebe growing up.

14 February, 1939
Lee Chau Fung, "Agnes", Bruce Lee's sister, is born in Hong Kong and referred to as the eldest child of the Lees, even though she was around 40-days younger than Phoebe.

23 October, 1939
Lee Jung Sum 李忠琛, "Peter", Bruce Lee's brother, is born in Hong Kong.

18 November, 1939
The Cantonese Opera - possibly the Kam Tim Fa Opera troupe - arrives in the U.S. for a year-long tour of Chinatowns across America in support of the patriotic "Bowl of Rice Movement". Disembarking in San Francisco from the SS President Coolidge, they are set to perform in the city's Mandarin Theatre in Chinatown, sponsored by pioneering Chinese filmmaker, Ng Kam Ha 伍錦霞, "Esther Eng", a family friend. Lee Hoi Chuen headlines as one of the shows stars, accompanied by his wife, Grace, as the tour's "wardrobe mistress", the couple board at nearby 18 Trenton Street.

10 October, 1940
Cheung Cheuk Hing 張卓慶, "William", is born in Hong Kong and was one of Bruce Lee's close friends and Wing Chun mentors; they bonded over their shared passion for fighting.

27 November, 1940
Lee Jun Fan 李振藩, "Bruce", is born at 845 Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco, in the Chinese calendar "Year of the Dragon", while Lee Hoi Chuen is performing in New York's Chinatown. Grace, according to Chinese superstition, also gives her son the feminine name of "Sai Fon", or "Little Phoenix", to protect him from evil spirits, and dressed in girls' clothes with his left ear pierced with an earring. This would be the affectionate name used by the Lee household to address Bruce through much of his youth; he would not go by the name of "Bruce Lee" until many years later as an adult.

February, 1941
The three-month old infant appears in his first film, GOLDEN GATE GIRL 金門女 (or variously, TEARS OF SAN FRANCISCO),in a brief scene as the titular character as a "baby girl", directed by the pioneering LGBTQ filmmaker, Esther Eng, in the first Cantonese language film made in the U.S.

06 April, 1941
The Lees depart the U.S. for Hong Kong aboard the SS President Pierce for the eighteen-day crossing.

27 May, 1941
GOLDEN GATE GIRL is released to cinemas in Chinese communities in the U.S. - it would not be shown in Southeast Asia until 1946.

25 December, 1941
The conclusion of the Battle of Hong Kong, which began on the 8th of December, 1941, in a simultaneous attack launched by the Japanese Empire on the same morning as the assault on Pearl Harbour. The British Crown Colony surrendered on Christmas Day 1941, marking an occupation of the territory by the Japanese that would last for almost four years.

1943
During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Lee Hoi Chuen takes advantage of the depressed housing market and acquires several properties for rental, as well as moving his family from their cramped home in the Yau Tsim Mong District to a larger apartment on Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, an affluent area of Kowloon in Hong Kong. The extended Lee family, numbers around sixteen in total, including servants - a live-in couple and their son, Wu Ngan, who Lee Hoi Chuen treats as one of his own children - and a menagerie of pets.

21 March, 1945
Linda Emery, Bruce Lee's future wife, is born in Everett, Washington in the U.S.

30 August, 1945
The liberation of Japanese occupied Hong Kong by Allied Forces, signalling the end of World War II.

1946
Lee Chau Peng, Grace's fifth child is born, but the baby girl tragically, does not live long.
Bruce Lee makes an appearance alongside his father in a small role in THE BIRTH OF MANKIND, his is just six-years old and billed as "Little Lee Hoi Chuen", and meets Chan Ling Chung 小麒麟, another child actor better known as Unicorn Chan, who would become his lifelong friend.

24 November, 1948
Bruce Lee appears again in another of his father's films, WEALTH IS LIKE A DREAM 富貴浮雲.

16 December, 1948
The Lees' last child, Lee Jun Fai 李振輝, "Robert" is born.

06 May, 1949
Bruce Lee has a minor role in XISHI IN THE DREAM 夢裡西施

27 November, 1949
Bruce Lee meets William Cheung, the son of a family friend, at his ninth birthday party.

07 December, 1949
The Chinese Civil War ends in victory for Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party, forming the People's Republic of China, resulting in yet another mass migration of refugees to Hong Kong.

1950
Yip Man, one of the most formidable exponents of the then little known martial art of Wing Chun, arrives in Hong Kong having fled Mainland China and the Communist uprising, virtually penniless. He hails from a wealthy family, but by this time has squandered most of the of the fortune he had managed to smuggle out, and like Bruce Lee's own father, he is a habitual and lifelong opium user.

20 February, 1950
Bruce Lee appears in a filmed adaptation of a comedy Cantonese Opera, BLOOMS & BUTTERFLIES 花開蝶滿枝.

31 May, 1950
Bruce Lee lands his first starring role and box office smash in THE KID 細路祥, where he is first credited as "Lee Siu Lung" - "Little Dragon" - reputedly by the film's director-actor, Fung Fung 馮峰, who came up with this professional name that he would be forever known as to Chinese audiences. The film's success prompts the Datong Film Company to opt for a sequel but Lee Hoi Chuen, in light of his son's troublemaking ways at school and fighting, prohibits the fledging star from returning.

25 June, 1950
The conflict between North and South Korea heralds the beginnings of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, a ceasefire is agreed on the 27 July, 1953 - officially, the Korean War has never ended.

12 April, 1951
Almost a year later, Bruce Lee returns to appear in a small role in INFANCY 人之初.

September, 1951
Bruce Lee is enrolled at La Salle College as "Lee Yuen Kam", a Catholic boys' secondary school, where his older brother, Peter, had also once been a pupil. He shows little aptitude for his studies outside of drawing and learning English, the primary language spoken at the school, but has a voracious appetite for books ever since he learned to read. He is disruptive in classes and often gets into fights with little provocation despite his slight size for someone of his age and acquires a reputation as a troublemaker.

30 April, 1953
Bruce Lee appears in the first of a series of eleven films for Union Film Enterprise, starting with THE GUIDING LIGHT 苦海明燈. The company featured a collective of "stock" actors, writers, directors concerned with economic and social injustice issues in their films, rather than the usual escapist fare. Union Film Enterprises was seen as being at the forefront of the neo-realist movement during Hong Kong cinema's "Golden Age".

02 June, 1953
The coronation of Queen Elizaeth II in the U.K., following the death of her father, King George V on 6 February, 1952.

28 June, 1953
A MOTHER'S TEARS 慈母淚

27 Septemeber, 1953
BLAME IT ON FATHER 父之過

08 October, 1953
A MYRIAD HOMES 千萬人家

27 November, 1953
IN THE FACE OF DEMOLITION 危樓春曉

Summer 1954
According to William Cheung, a student of the Wing Chun master, Yip Man, and a boyhood friend of Bruce Lee, he introduced him to the art and gained him entrance to Yip Man's classes, then being held at the Hong Kong Restaurant Workers' Association’s headquarters in Kowloon. The "upstart", as Yip Man calls him, is hardworking and displays a natural, aggressive talent that has already gotten him in trouble at school, on the streets and with the police for fighting long before he started learning Wing Chun. He also takes up dancing around this time and excels at the cha-cha.

July 1954
Elvis Presley releases his cover version of Billy Crudup's THAT'S ALL RIGHT in the U.S. and is an instant sensation.

01 January, 1955
LOVE (PART 1) 愛(上集)

08 January, 1955
LOVE (PART 2) 愛(下集)

11 February, 1955
AN ORPHAN'S TRAGEDY 孤星血淚

24 June, 1955
THE FAITHFUL WIFE 守得雲開見月明

08 September, 1955
ORPHAN'S SON 孤兒行

30 September, 1955
Actor James Dean is killed in an automobile accident in Cholame, California in the U.S., he was twenty-four years old.

21 October, 1955
WE OWE IT TO OUR CHILDREN 兒女債, was Bruce Lee's last film for the Union Film Enterprises collective.

21 October, 1955
THE WISE GUYS WHO FOOL AROUND 詐痲納福

10 September, 1956
Grace enrols her son at St. Francis Xavier's College after Bruce Lee is expelled from La Salle College for his continued fighting and troublemaking. Several of his fellow classmates become his firm friends, as well as Wing Chun students of Yip Man, such as Ben Der, Hawkins Chueng and a younger boy who Lee introduces, Duncan Leung - who becomes a disciple of the master, one of only five among the less than twenty to be personally taught by Yip Man himself.

22 December, 1956
TOO LATE FOR DIVORCE 早知當初我唔嫁

1957
Bruce Lee is barred from attending Wing Chun classes due to his mother's Eurasian ancestry, a fact duly reported to Yip Man by the other students, who knew of the old master's belief that his art should not be taught to "foreigners". But the banishment was primarily due to jealousy from others who resented Lee's arrogance and rising dominance and skill as a martial artist. Yip Man, who had grown fond of his "upstart", took the unusual step of asking his senior instructors, Wong Shung Leung and William Cheung, to continue training him privately outside of public classes.

14 March, 1957
THUNDERSTORM 雷雨

04 October, 1957
The Soviet Union launches the world's first artifical satellite, Sputnik 1, into the Earth's orbit.

06 December, 1957
DARLING GIRL 甜姐兒

1958
Bruce Lee wins the 1958 Hong Kong Cha-Cha Championship.
Benefitting once more from his father's wide network of acquaintance and friends, Bruce Lee trades dancing lessons with Uncle Siu for his extensive martial arts knowledge borne out of his days at the legendary Jing Wu Athletic Association in Shanghai, China.

29 March, 1958
Bruce Lee scores a convincing and decisive victory over the reigning three-year title holder, Gary Elms of the nearby expats school, King George V, at the 1958 Interschool Boxing Championships. Out of the nineteen bouts held that day, Lee was the sole victor from St. Francis Xavier's College to collect a winner's medal, even though he had no prior experience of Western boxing, he was a fast and intuitive student of fighting.

02 May, 1958
Bruce Lee engages in a rooftop fight, common in Hong Kong at the time between rival martial arts schools and gang members, and defeats his opponent with Wong Shun Leung acting as both his "coach" and the referee of the organized bout.

Autumn 1958
Lee Hoi Chuen and Grace decide to send their son away to the U.S., as both a punishment and as a means for Bruce Lee to reclaim his U.S. citizenship, after another brush with the law. In an encounter with the son of a high-ranking member of Hong Kong's many Secret Societies, or "Triads", Lee reputedly roughs up his opponent enough - accounts vary from a bloody nose to broken arms! - for the police to become involved. To the horror and shame of Lee's parents, their son's name is apparently on a police blacklist of juvenile delinquents, and they are advised the situation will only get worse for him if drastic action is not taken.

The decision to send their son overseas would prove to be the making of Bruce Lee...

sources : China – A Dark History (2019 Amber Books) Michael Kerrigan | Bruce Lee: King Of Kung-Fu (1974 Wildwood House Ltd.) Felix Dennis, Don Atyeo | Bruce Lee Memorial (1974 Rainbow Publications Inc.) | Jun Fan Gung Fu: Origins And Evolution (2023 Independently Published) Ryan Ohl | Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art Of Self-Defense (1963 Oriental Book Sales) Bruce Lee | Bruce Lee: Letters Of The Dragon (2016 Tuttle Publishing) Bruce Lee, John Little | Striking Distance (2016 University Of Nebraska Press) Charles Russo | A Guide To Martial Arts Training With Equipment (1980 Know How Publishing Co.) Dan Inosanto | Jeet Kune Do: The Art & Philosophy Of Bruce Lee (1994 Know Now Publishing) Dan Inosanto | The Legendary Bruce Lee (1986 Ohara Publications Inc.) Black Belt Magazine | The Making Of Enter The Dragon (1987 Unique Publications) Robert Clouse | Tao Of Jeet Kune Do (1975 Ohara Publications Inc.) Bruce Lee | Who Killed Bruce Lee (1978 H. Bunch Associates Ltd.) Editors Of Kung-Fu Monthly | Combat Magazine (Martial Art Publications) | Inside Kung-Fu Magazine (Cfw Enterprises Inc.) | Karate International (Dojo Publishing Ltd.) | Kung-Fu Monthly (H. Bunch Associates Ltd.) | Martial Arts Illustrated (Martial Arts Ltd.) | The Hong Kong Film Archive (Sai Wan Ho, Hong Kong) | Bruce Lee Filmography (HKMDB & MyDramaList) | Bloodyelbow.Com | BruceLeeWasHere.com | Bruce Lee Lives! Forum