Customer Reviews

The Dragon and the Tiger: The Oakland Years: Volume 2

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Volume two picks up where the previous issue left off. Plenty of stories here to delight the curious, as featured Bruce Lee and James Yimm Lee interact with Kenpo's Ralph Castro, T.Y. Wong, Al Novak, Wally Jay, etc. While it is probably the name of Bruce Lee that will attract most readers, it is the story of James Yimm Lee that I have been following. The experiences of these men are intertwined as they search for understanding and mastery over themselves. These are the days before Bruce Lee's fame as a screen star, when James Yimm Lee Introduces Bruce Lee to bodybuilding, and Bruce teaches James the Sil Lim Tao form of Wing Chun Kung Fu. James teaches Bruce how to break bricks, and Bruce Lee brings James to a new level in Chi Sao. Bruce is fascinated with a method of breaking whereby James and his student Al Novak are able to break a specified brick out of a stack of many...Bruce wants to know how it is done, and James tells him. One third of the book deals with the effort to write and publish Bruce Lee's first book, "Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self-Defense".

One of the faults of this series is that it is written as a long story. There are no footnotes, no bibliography or index at the back. This makes it awfully hard to use as a factual reference. Were there interviews done, and with whom? Who contributed to this book, is entirely based on the memories of James Yimm Lee's son, Greglon Lee? That aside, "The Dragon and The Tiger" series makes for an enjoyable read. More's the pity that so many of the pioneers of physical culture and martial arts from that era remain unknown and unheralded. Perhaps along with James Lee, someday we will have detailed accounts of (or by for those who are still with us) Al Novak, Lau Bun, T.Y. Wong, James Wing Woo and Paul Pung to keep Bruce company on our shelves.