Bruce Lee's last home, 41 Cumberland Road, as it is today. Photos Provided by Red Door News, Hong Kong

Memorabilia at the Bruce Lee Shop in Nathan Road.

A high-profile plan to turn Bruce Lee's former home into a museum to the kung fu star has been abandoned, the China Daily has discovered. So why is it that the city's most famous star seems to be feted the world over but snubbed in his home city? Simon Parry reports.

In a ramshackle shop in Tsim Sha Tsui piled high with posters, videos, magazines, action figures and other memorabilia, 23-year-old Hayley Chan seems almost love-struck as she describes the timeless appeal of a man whose 70th birthday was celebrated last year.

"He's very handsome," she says with a bashful smile. "He is famous for his kung fu and very attractive to women. Even young children like him. When they walk past the shop they stop and say 'Wow! Bruce Lee!'"

Hayley, a part-time assistant in the Bruce Lee Shop in Nathan Road, was born 15 years after Bruce Lee died but when you hear her speak, it is clear that his fame lives on and his flame burns just as brightly for at least some of today's generation.

"Bruce Lee is a legend," she said. "He combined kung fu with philosophy, and he had great wisdom. He was an intelligent man and he is still very popular today."

The cruel paradox for fans like Hayley is while the most famous product of Hong Kong's movie industry is feted and celebrated the world over, there seems to be a curious reluctance by his home city to embrace him and to capitalize on his legacy.

Film directors including Quentin Tarantino pay him homage and the mainland has its own Bruce Lee theme park near his ancestral village - but in Hong Kong the only permanent memorial to the man who many believe did so much for the city is a statue on the Avenue of Stars funded by fans and added only in 2005.

Three years ago, it seemed all that might change. The owner of the star's last home - a low-rise Kowloon Tong building affectionately called The Crow's Nest by Lee who lived there from 1972 until his death the following year - announced plans to donate the property to the city as a museum to the star.

Billionaire philanthropist Yu Panglin declared with some fanfare that he was taking the HK$100 million house - which had been ignominiously used for some years as a "love hotel" - off the market and negotiating to make it the permanent testament to Hong Kong's most famous son that Bruce Lee fans had for years campaigned for.

A design competition was held, attracting 140 entries from around the world, with the winning entries shown off in a travelling exhibition around Hong Kong early last year. After years in the wilderness it seemed, the Bruce Lee legacy was coming home at last.

However, the China Daily has discovered that the deal has fallen apart. Talks between Yu and the Hong Kong government have broken down, apparently beyond repair, and the plan for a Bruce Lee museum at 41 Cumberland Road has been quietly ditched.

Yu's offer, it seems, was dependent on the government agreeing to a lavish multi-story museum project with cinema screens and martial arts rooms, a prospect that would have been immensely costly as well as not surprisingly horrified neighbors in the quiet residential area the home occupies.

Bruce Lee's last home, 41 Cumberland Road, in 1972, when the kung fu star lived there.

When the China Daily visited earlier this month, 41 Cumberland Road was still operating as a love hotel, with a screened off areas for cars to be discretely parked away during furtive encounters in the hotel where rooms are hired out by the hour.

"Yes this is where Bruce Lee lived but it's now a hotel," a female receptionist said, pointing the way down a ground floor corridor with poky, dark rooms on either side, and a poster of a topless blonde model at the end. "If you want a room, it will cost you HK$200," she said.

Asked about the museum plan, the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau said in a statement: "Over the past two years, the government has tried its best in an effort to restore Bruce Lee's former residence in Kowloon Tong for visitation by locals and visitors.

"Despite our efforts, we are unable to reach a consensus with the property owner over the scope of the restoration.

"Since the Tourism Commission has gathered over a hundred artefacts related to Mr Bruce Lee and produced a TV documentary on his life, to avoid disappointing the public, we plan to co-operate with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department in organizing a themed exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Shatin to showcase Mr Lee's life and his contributions to the development of film and Kung Fu culture."

The exhibition which has no set time limit is expected to be opened to the public and visitors in late 2012, in time for the 40th anniversary of his death, the statement said - a gesture that will most likely come as small comfort to the Bruce Lee fans hoping for a permanent memorial to the star.

Steve Kerridge, a UK-based fan and martial arts expert who has written a number of books about Bruce Lee including the Bruce Lee Chronicles, described the lack of a Hong Kong museum to the star as "really crazy".

"If Hollywood can honor the man with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, why can't Hong Kong honor him with a substantial museum of some kind?

"As Fred Weintraub (producer of Lee's final film Enter the Dragon) so eloquently put it: 'Before Bruce Lee, every town had a barbers shop and a church After Bruce Lee, every town had a barbers shop, a church and a martial arts school.

"In England, there was only karate before Bruce Lee. I teach kick-boxing for a living and it is all because of Bruce Lee. My life is centered around what Bruce Lee influenced me to do.

"Most countries have something to commemorate their most famous characters. England even has a James Bond museum. There are plaques outside houses where famous people were born or brought up. In Hong Kong, there is definitely something missing."

Kerridge visited Hong Kong in 2006 and was shocked to find so few references to Bruce Lee.

Hayley Chan, 23, with a figure of Bruce Lee at the Bruce Lee Shop in Nathan Road.

"I think the problem is that Hong Kong people don't care about the past," he said.

"They tend to just think about what's now and what's happening. It's all about making money. Hong Kong is just too much of a fast-moving place.

"But Bruce Lee had an enormous influence. He put it on the map in modern times in many ways. Without Bruce Lee, there would never have been a Jackie Chan. He opened the doors. It was a bit like the Beatles going to American and opening the door for British pop groups of the 1960s.

"People in Hong Kong need to wake up and realize the impact Lee had on the world of action cinema and the martial art genre in general. The world of martial art practice has seen a dramatic change since he appeared."

The influence of Lee extends far beyond the world of martial arts: He also broke down stereotypes of Chinese people which before his film tended to cast Asian characters only in subservient roles, according to Kerridge.

"His influence has managed to cross racial barriers like none other before him, bringing people of all races together in terms of equality, especially the Asian barriers that were so prevalent with typecast characters in the Hollywood movie machine," he said.

Philip Kenny, a Bruce Lee enthusiast who lives in Hong Kong and who has tracked down long-lost locations for some of his fight scenes, said he had heard the Cumberland Road house had already been sold to new owners who were allowing it to remain a love hotel.

"It all strikes me as being a very typical Hong Kong way of letting things quietly disappear so that nobody loses face over the issue," he said.

"I do get the feeling though that the government was handed a bit of a hot potato in the first place.

"The government's reaction wasn't one of overwhelming enthusiasm when they announced the donation of the property so in hindsight I guess the writing was on the wall. But I'm a little bit annoyed there hasn't been any kind of announcement. I thought it was all still in the planning stages."

Kenny said: "It wasn't really the Hong Kong government's fault. They weren't really willing to throw lots of money at it. You could say they should have bought the house. But that's HK$100 million that probably wouldn't be able to make much money anyway.

"At the end of the day it looks like the landlord might have regretted his decision to donate it and decided to play hard ball. He put very restrictive criteria he knew couldn't be fulfilled."

The house in Cumberland Road - where Lee lived for the last year of his life - was the last real opportunity Hong Kong had to create a permanent museum to the star, Kenny said, saying the exhibition in Shatin was "better than nothing".

"It's probably the best place for a display but at the end of the day it's a pretty sterile kind of place," he said.

"It's not a museum I would go out of my way to visit. It's in the middle of nowhere and it's not convenient to get to. It's an afterthought really, and a bit disappointing."

Back at the Bruce Lee Shop in Nathan Road, business on a Saturday afternoon is steady rather than brisk with a handful of adult fans, some with young children, wandering in to look at the videos, books, magazines and other memorabilia of Hong Kong's biggest star.

This, Hayley explains, is the home of the 600-member Bruce Lee Club of Hong Kong which has seen membership continue to rise as the kung fu star's legend lives on. The shop, she says, is popular with both locals and visiting fans from overseas.

"Our most popular items are figures of Bruce Lee," she said, pointing out one limited edition figure of Bruce Lee in fighting pose made to mark the 70th anniversary of his birth which has been selling well at HK$1,250. Other, rarer collectible figures sell for up to HK$30,000.

Told about the collapse of the museum project, Hayley said members had anticipated it for some time as the talks appeared to flounder. "It is very disappointing," she said. "There really should be a proper museum for Bruce Lee in Hong Kong."

Meanwhile, fans in Hong Kong are using a new tactic to see their hero remembered in a fitting way. The Bruce Lee Club wants to put up plaques on buildings around Hong Kong associated with the star, including his old schools and, of course, 41 Cumberland Road.

This more modest project - which the club hopes to carry out in conjunction with the government - may be on a more achievable scale than a Bruce Lee museum which, for now at least, is a dream too far for his Hong Kong fans.

(HK Edition 06/17/2011 page4)