FOR DECADES pilgrims from around the world have flocked to Lake View Cemetery on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Tens of thousands arrive every year to pay their respects to Bruce Lee, an international celebrity from Hong Kong, whom Time magazine listed as one of the one hundred most important people of the twentieth century. This is one of the ten most visited gravesites in the world.
Like many martial artists, you especially want to pay your respects at Bruce’s final resting place on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 2023. It’s on a late afternoon that you, not too clear in your head and heart, go to his gravestone.
Lakeview Cemetery has few trees and even less shade. The sun, a raging ball of gas and plasma, is blinding, so you’re wearing a pair of polarized Ray-Bans. To reach where Bruce is buried, you walk straight from the front gate. His and his son Brandon’s graves are cordoned off, which means you must pad along a paved walkway.
On the headstone, there is a black-and-white photo of Bruce, forever thirty-two years old. It was he who revolutionized fight scenes in American movies and shattered stereotypes by projecting the image of an Asian man who was unbeatable, handsome, young, and sexy. His name appears in English
