Not a Chinaman's Chance

Have you ever told someone your dream or idea and been shut down immediately?  "You can't do that!"  "That's impossible."  "Do you know how hard that is?"  You don't have a Chinaman's chance of pulling that off."  The phrase, "not a Chinaman's chance," comes from the 1800's when they were building the railroad across the United States.  On the western end of the country, thousands of Chinese immigrants were hired as laborers to help build the railroad.  One of the jobs they got was to rappel down cliffs and place dynamite in holes to blast away the rock.  On many occasions, their co-workers didn't pull them back up quick enough, and the laborers were killed by the explosion or falling rocks.  The phrase grew out of the misfortune of those laborers who were said to have "not a Chinaman's chance" of surviving that job.

I was born in the mid 1960's, at a time when most workers were "company men."  Like most children in the early 70's, I was taught that I would finish high school, possibly go to college, and then work for the same company my whole life.  Workers were mostly men then, and I could either wear a white shirt, tie, and pocket protector, like my dad, a design engineer.  Or I could be a blue collar worker, becoming a welder, machinist, or factory floor worker.  Us 70's kids were taught to respect and look up to businessmen, usually fat, bloated guys who wore nice suits and drank a lot.  This was an era when it wasn't uncommon to see your doctor smoking.  We were taught to respect authority figures, even if those people were complete fucking assholes.

Into that world came two people who became heroes to us kids.  The first was Evel Knievel, the motorcycle daredevil who always flew the "Fuck it" flag and whose motto seemed to be, "Huck it and hope for the best."  In his early years, he was not well liked by parents.  But his televised motorcycle jumps left a lasting impression on us kids.

Around the same time came another, even more unlikely hero.  Bruce Lee was a young man who was born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, but raised in Hong Kong.  He was a talented dancer as a kid.  Really, he was, look it up.  He also trained under Wing Chun master Yip Man.  With his martial arts skills, he became quite a street fighter in Hong Kong.  But Bruce had ambition.  He emigrated to the U.S., and studied philosophy in college.  He also opened up his own dojo to teach Chinese Gung Fu to anyone interested.  At the time, this Chinese martial art was only to be taught to other Chinese.  Bruce literally had to fight the best gung fu guy around to earn the right to teach anyone of any race.  He went on to teach teach whites, blacks, and others, including several film and TV stars.  He felt stifled by the forms he had learned as a kid.  Ultimately, he took what was most effective from gung fu, Western boxing, fencing, and any other fighting form that had something to offer.  He called his new way of fighting Jeet Kune Do, or The Way of the Intercepting Fist.  In effect, he created the first mixed martial art, a couple decades before that became popular.

As if that wasn't enough, young Bruce decided to go into acting.  At the time, the only roles for Chinese were really bad caricatures of the Chinese culture, which infuriated Bruce.  He not only wanted to act, he wanted to completely blow away the stereotype of the goofy Chinaman he saw on the big screen.  Now if he had told anyone in the movie business this, they would have told him, "You don't have a Chinaman's chance."

But Bruce Lee didn't quit.  He became a movie star, and changed the way fighting was portrayed on film.  He wrote, directed, and starred in his own movies, at a time when that was unheard of.  Against all odds, Bruce Lee not only made it on screen, but he became a hero to millions of kids of all races in the U.S. and around the world.  Decades after his death, the skinny Chinese kid who had a hard time putting on weight is often written about in body building magazines.  The Chinese martial artist who bucked all trends is still a legend in the martial arts world for his super human speed, power, and contributions to the fighting arts.

This blog is about the people who dream big dreams, and then work their asses off to accomplish them.  I could think of no better person than Bruce Lee to write this first post about.  If you have ambitions, ideas, and dreams that you have chased, or intend to chase, this blog may be for you.