Bruce Lee and the City (Hong Kong Trip 2011)

Travel trail last 2011 included our visit to the Avenue of  Stars located along the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui, HK.  It is modeled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Celebrating Hong Kong's Film Industry, the avenue features a 2.5 metre bronze statue of Bruce Lee which was erected along the Avenue of Stars in 2005. Set into the promenade are star plaques honoring the celebrities. Some contain hand prints and autographs of the stars set in cement. 

According to wikipedia, most of the plaques only contain celebrities' names as they are now deceased. Of course, we need to find popular names on it since we are not really familiar with some Chinese star. We are there were few people that night at the avenue so we easily spotted Bruce Lee's star plaque and also Jackie Chan's and Jet Li's.

Me and my wife had our photo ops, of course, esp with Bruce Lee's enigmatic statue which magnets a lot of tourists so it's hard to look for a good vantage point for photography. Visiting Hong Kong isn't complete if your camera data cards has no signs of this great martial artist who influenced a lot of media forms from television, movies, music, advertising and more. He is a pop icon who changed the image of Asian in films which we pictured as dorky before the era of superhero martial artists in films who can manage to put down gangs in few chops.  Bruce Lee was born in the US but he was raised in Kowloon, and urban area in Hong Kong until he decided to go back in America due to threats he gained from local gang fights. His move to the silver screen is one history that is too big to blog. Nevertheless, you can Google it for free. :)

If you want a virtual Bruce in his famous yellow get up with black strip, you can get to Madame Tussauds wax museum located inside of  Hong Kong Island's Peak Tower (The Peak) which houses the Peak Tram and a complex of shopping malls. The Hong Kong branch houses nearly 100 wax figures of internationally-known personalities but we it was closing when we got there. We were lucky that Bruce Lee's wax look-alike was placed along the free-of-charge photo op entrance area. Let me just say I had a great time posing in my best martial arts fun move with this living legend!  Happy Birthday Bruce Lee! :) 'Til the next post...