Fans of kung fu legend Bruce Lee will soon be able to take a tour of the star’s residence.
Hong Kong property tycoon Yu Pang-lin has been given the green light to transform the two-storey town house into a museum honouring the film icon.
The 5,700 square-foot, two-storey town house in a Kowloon suburb where Lee spent the last months of his life is currently a love motel which provided hourly room rentals.
Bruce Lee fans have been struggling for years to save the house from such an inglorious fate and Yu finally made a surprise decision last year to donate it to the city where the martial arts master first shot to fame.
“Both sides have now reached a consensus to go ahead and essentially proceed with this good plan,” Yu told reporters after a meeting with government officials.
“I’m 88 years old now and hope that while I’m still alive I’ll be able to see this Bruce Lee museum completed,” he added.
Hong Kong’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau has agreed to preserve the “original outlook of the building and its features”, recreating parts of the home to revitalise it as a long term sustainable tourism attraction.
Yu said that he wants the site to include a library, martial arts centre and a movie theatre to fully commemorate Lee’s life a philosophy.
Born in San Francisco, Lee was widely regarded as the most influential martial artist of the twentieth century. His movies “Fist of Fury,” “Game of Death” and “Enter the Dragon” changed and influenced martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world.
Hong Kong’s Bruce Lee fan club welcomed the breakthrough plan, and expressed hopes that the residence will prove to be as big a draw as other global memorial sites such as the Beatles Story in Liverpool and Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Tennessee.
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