Cemetery of Bruce Lee
written by wil6ka
on May 9th, 2008
(2 votes)
I didn’t even know, that when legends die, that they have to lay down in a cemetery. That they are nothing but normal Earthly creatures that pass away one day sooner or later. I was recently in Seattle and after a few days I kind of got bored and flipped through the hotel-journal to find other interesting spots in town.
I stopped at the lake-view cemetery, hence it was written there, that it sheltered the remains of Bruce Lee.
So I knew that the martial arts legend was born in San Francisco and acted most of his life in Hong Kong, so why Seattle? But this question could be asked in other occasions, too. For example in Mostar, the great own in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2005 there was a bronze statue inaugurated there. So why Mostar? Well, the citizens wanted to build a statue of a hero. But the town is divided in a Moslem and a Christian part and the social wounds of the war still run very deep. Therefore Bruce Lee was the only one, that people could agree on.
Bruce Lee had one of the fittest bodies ever known. He owned 140 books on physical training and was admired by large parts of the bodybuilder community for his low body-fat and his very defined muscles. He could do push-ups only with his thumps and he could catch grains of rice in the air just with his chopsticks.
But after all he just reached the age of 32 and died probably of an epileptic attack. He was just too fast! In his film they had to shoot on 32 frames per second and to put in slow-motion, because his actions could not be captured on the regular 24 fps.
His legend ever grew, because of his mysterious death and it was relieved in 1993 as his son and actor Brandon Lee suffered a likewise awkward death while acting in his movie “The Crow”. His tomb was placed next to the grave of his deceased father at the Lake View Cemetery also. The cemetery is close to the Science Park in the north of the city and close to the Museum of arts. There are probably buses going there, but I don’t which lines. It lays rather remotely and in a area, where there are more villas and rich people are living.
There is a giant “Chinatown” at the cemetery and it shows how close China is and how long the relation of both the countries are. Thousands of Chinese workers were shipped to the US to build the railway-system. And ever since the Chinese stayed there. Therefore it seems only natural for Bruce Lee to remain in Seattle.
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