Lee Hoi-chuen had been touring the United States for many years and performing at numerous Chinese communities there.
Although a number of his peers decided to stay in the United States, Lee Hoi-chuen decided to go back to Hong Kong after his wife gave birth to Bruce Lee.
Within months, Hong Kong was invaded and the Lees lived for three years and eight months under Japanese occupation.
After the war ended, Lee Hoi-chuen resumed his acting career and became a more popular actor during Hong Kong's rebuilding years.
Lee's mother, Grace Ho, was from one of the wealthiest and most powerful clans in Hong Kong, the Ho-tungs.
She was the niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, patriarch of the clan. As such, the young Bruce Lee grew up in an affluent and privileged environment.
Despite this advantage of his family's status and because of the mass number of people fleeing communist China to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong neighbourhood Lee grew up in became over-crowded, dangerous, and full of gang rivalries:
Post-war Hong Kong was a tough place to grow up.
Gangs ruled the city streets and Lee was often forced to fight them. But Bruce liked a challenge and faced his adversaries head on.
To his parents dismay, Bruce's street fighting continued and the violent nature of his confrontations was escalating.
After being involved in several street fights, Lee's parents decided that he needed to be trained in the martial arts.
Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father.
He learned the fundamentals of Wu style tai chi chuan from his father.
Wing Chun
The largest influence on Lee's martial arts development was his study of Wing Chun. Lee began training in Wing Chun at the age of 13 under the Wing Chun teacher Yip Man in 1954, after losing a fight with rival gang members.
Yip's regular classes generally consisted of the forms practice, chi sao (sticking hands) drills, wooden dummy techniques, and free-sparring.
There was no set pattern to the classes.
Yip tried to keep his students from fighting in the street gangs of Hong Kong by encouraging them to fight in organised competitions.
After a year into his Wing Chun training, most of Yip Man's other students refused to train with Lee after they learnt of his ancestry (his mother was of half-German ancestry) as the Chinese generally were against teaching their martial arts techniques to non-Asians.
Lee's sparring partner, Hawkins Cheung states, "Probably fewer than six people in the whole Wing Chun clan were personally taught, or even partly taught, by Yip Man".
However, Lee showed a keen interest in Wing Chun, and continued to train privately with Yip Man and Wong Shun Leung in 1955.
Leaving Hong Kong
After attending Tak Sun School (德信學校) (a couple of blocks from his home at 218 Nathan Road, Kowloon), Lee entered the primary school division of La Salle College in 1950 or 1952 (at the age of 12).
In around 1956, due to poor academic performance (or possibly poor conduct as well), he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College (high school) where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a Catholic monk (originally from Germany spending his entire adult life in China and then Hong Kong), teacher, and coach of the school boxing team.
In the spring of 1959, Lee got into yet another street fight and the police were called.
From all the way to his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating up the son of a feared triad family.
Eventually, Lee's father decided for him to leave Hong Kong to pursue a safer and healthier avenue in the United States.
His parents confirmed the police's fear that this time Lee's opponent had an organised crime background, and there was the possibility that a contract was out for his life.
The police detective came and he says "Excuse me Mr. Lee, your son is really fighting bad in school. If he gets into just one more fight I might have to put him in jail". — " Robert Lee ".
In April 1959, Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States to meet up with his older sister Agnes Lee (李秋鳳), who was already living with family friends in San Francisco.
