By James Tabafunda
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
The Bruce Lee Commemorative Forever Stamp is unveiled on Feb. 18. Photo by James Tabafunda.
A ceremony for a new U.S. stamp is no ordinary event. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) on Feb. 18 dedicated a new Forever stamp honoring martial arts legend, actor, and filmmaker Bruce Lee at a ceremony held in the historic Nippon Kan Theatre in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (CID). The dedication drew more than 150 people to the neighborhood where Lee once taught his first martial arts classes.
The Bruce Lee Commemorative Forever Stamp First-Day-of-Issue Dedication Ceremony at the 117-year-old theater featured a formal unveiling of the stamp design, remarks from Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee and USPS Senior Vice President Benjamin Kuo, and tributes from Sue Ann Kay, Lee’s first female gung fu student in Seattle, and author Jeff Chang.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson also declared the week Bruce Lee Week, coinciding with a wave of Bruce Lee programming across the city and Lunar New Year celebrations.
“Bruce Lee has earned this special tribute because he wasn’t just an action film star who could fight,” Kuo said. “He was a philosopher who could think and a teacher who inspired millions.”
The stamp features a black-and-white egg tempera painting by Brooklyn-based artist Kam Mak depicting Lee mid-air, demonstrating his signature flying kick against a yellow brushstroke on a white background.
Mak, who emigrated from Hong Kong as a child and is a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, studied all of Lee’s films to capture the essence of his likeness. He rendered the painting in egg tempera on traditional gesso, a centuries-old technique that uses egg yolk to bind pigments. USPS’s Art Director, Antonio Alcalá, designed the stamp layout.
Kuo told attendees that photographs of Lee performing the flying kick did not reveal enough detail of his face, so the USPS commissioned an expert martial artist to perform the kick for reference photographs.
“The result is a black-and-white painting of Lee executing his iconic move against a yellow calligraphic brushstroke, which recalls the famous tracksuit from 1978’s ‘Game of Death,’” Kuo said. “It appears as if Lee’s kick is breaking them in half. This arrangement with Lee and USA is bold. It emphasizes the kinetic power of his legendary move.”
Seattle’s lasting connection to Bruce Lee
The ceremony’s location carried deep significance. Lee moved to Seattle in 1959 at age 18, initially working at Ruby Chow’s Chinese restaurant, thanks to an arrangement made by his father. He enrolled at the University of Washington from 1961 to 1964, studying philosophy and drama.
It was in Seattle that Lee first began teaching martial arts in the CID and University District, developing the Jun Fan Gung Fu method that later evolved into Jeet Kune Do.
He met and married his wife, Linda Emery, in the city.
Lee is buried alongside his son, actor Brandon Lee, at Lake View Cemetery on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, a gravesite that draws thousands of visitors a year from around the world.
Emcee Mimi Gan, the founder and creative director of Mi2 Media and a 12-time Northwest Regional Emmy Award-winning journalist, noted the historical layers of the Nippon Kan Theatre.
“It’s so great to have this ceremony right here in the International District-Chinatown,” she said, adding that the American Legion Cathay Post #186 Color Guard, established by Chinese American World War II veterans, presented the colors to open the ceremony.
Lee family shares personal reflections
Shannon Lee, chief executive officer of Bruce Lee Enterprises and chair of the Bruce Lee Foundation, delivered the ceremony’s keynote, calling the stamp’s official, public, and national recognition profoundly meaningful.
“You really can’t underestimate the meaningfulness of representation and of being seen,” she said. “And so this stamp does that.”
She told the audience that the process to create the stamp began nine years ago: “Government. Am I right?” Listeners immediately laughed. She later said that her family had to approve the design.
“This recognition of my father’s impact in this way, on this stamp, the fact that it is official, the fact that it is public, the fact that it is national is very meaningful,” Lee said. “I really want us to take a minute to sit with how meaningful those things are for something to be recognized officially, publicly, nationally.”
Shannon Lee, left, and Linda Lee Cadwell, right. Photo by James Tabafunda.
She acknowledged her mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, who was in attendance, crediting her as the person who made her father’s accomplishments possible.
“There really is no Bruce Lee and what he was able to accomplish without her because she was his support,” Shannon Lee said. “She made it possible for him to be able to soar.”
In a one-on-one interview after the ceremony, Shannon Lee said the stamp’s arrival during a time of national division made the timing especially fitting.
“He was a connector of people. He brought cultures together,” she said. “I think this recognition on a national level is really important in this moment to remember, as Jeff said in his speech and as my father said in 1971, ‘Under the sky, we’re all one family.’”
“I see my job really as just trying to shine a spotlight on the totality of the man. He didn’t just make action movies. He actually had messages planted in those movies,” she said. “In that way, he helped shape culture, and he just shaped culture by being him to the best of his ability.”
First female student recalls Lee’s early Seattle classes
Kay, now 80, described being a teenager in 1961 when she found her way to Lee’s basement martial arts classes on Eighth Avenue [South in the CID].
“He was high energy, always kind, positive, a serious instructor, and also a jokester,” Kay said. “Bruce introduced me to yin and yang. He had tai chi in his class, besides the Chinese philosophy. And yes, of course, be like water … And as a 16-year-old, it was quite impressive.”
Kay drew a connection between Lee’s immigrant story and the present day.
“This is also significant in that Bruce’s best friend and assistant instructor in Seattle was Taky Kimura, a Japanese American who was gathered up and incarcerated during World War II,” she said. “And now we’re assembled in a time when we witness families and friends split apart, detained, and deported.”
Author calls Lee ‘uniquely an American hero’
Chang, the award-winning author of “Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America,” named one of the year’s best books by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, NPR, and Vogue, placed Lee’s legacy in the broader subject of Asian American history.
“Bruce Lee is universally recognized as the hero of the underdog,” Chang said. “He stands the world over as a symbol of resilience, of solidarity, of personal and collective liberation.”
He said it was fitting that Lee was being honored in Seattle, “because it’s here at the edge of the Pacific, in the Central District, in the city where Bruce truly learned America.”
“It’s here that he began to understand the perils and the promises that America could represent,” Chang said. “It’s here that he met his first students—young men and young women of all cultural backgrounds. And it’s here that he met the love of his life, Linda Emery.”
A week of celebrations
The stamp ceremony launched a week of Bruce Lee events in Seattle. The Wing Luke Museum, blocks from the theater, houses “Do You Know Bruce?”—the only exhibition outside of Hong Kong with a significant depth and breadth of Bruce Lee material—along with a companion exhibit, “Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee.”
Seattle Children’s Theatre opens the world premiere of “Young Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story,” a new play by Seattle playwright Keiko Green, on Feb. 19, running through March 22.
“I have loved being your emcee today,” Gan said, closing the ceremony. “And Bruce Lee forever.”
The stamps are available in sheets of 20 at post offices nationwide, through the USPS online store, and by phone at 844-737-7826. As Forever stamps, they will always be valid for mailing a one-ounce letter regardless of future price increases. For more information on the Bruce Lee Commemorative Forever Stamp, go to store.usps.com/store/product/bruce-lee-stamps-S_488004.
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