American history is riddled with blind spots that have gone missing from the public consciousness, leaving people with a stunted view of our country’s past and a walled-off perspective of its present.”Watchmen” showed many the truly awful race massacre that transpired in 1921 Tulsa. “Lovecraft Country” gave some viewers their first look at a Sundown Town. And Bruce Lee’s martial arts series “Warrior,” whose first two seasons just arrived on HBO Max after premiering on Cinemax, aims to shed light on the turn-of-the-century Chinese immigrant experience in San Francisco’s Chinatown.Early Chinese immigrants faced harassment from other workers that was exacerbated by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a law which set out to stop Chinese people from coming to America. As a result, men formed gangs (or “tongs”) in Chinatown as a defensive measure. Needless to say, it turned into a bloody turf war. And it went on for decades.
The “Warrior” series follows the story of Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a fighting wiz and hatchet man who tries to figure out where he fits in this new American landscape. He finds himself embedded in a criminal underworld rife with violence, which revolves around a Chinatown gang rivalry known as the Tong Wars.
If this is the first time you’ve ever heard about the Tong Wars, you’re not alone. It’s one of many details about Chinatown’s history that Shannon Lee — Bruce’s daughter, and executive producer on “Warrior” — points to as overlooked.
“[My father] did a lot of research about the history, the historical time period of the Tong Wars in San Francisco and Chinatown, as well as the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act,” Lee explains. “So he was very much tuned into this portion of history and found that it would make an amazing backdrop for a lot of themes that he wanted to hit on.”
The first two seasons of “Warrior,” adapted from a television treatment by Bruce Lee, just arrived on HBO Max.
David Bloomer/Cinemax
It’s worth noting that the initial treatment of the series was written by Bruce Lee roughly five decades ago. As the legend goes, he presented his idea to American TV execs and was ultimately rejected. Not long after, a program named “Kung Fu” hit the airwaves — it was a martial arts-themed series which followed Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine) as he traveled the Old West in search of his missing brother.
Does Shannon Lee believe her father’s idea was stolen? That’s a conversation for another time. What’s glaringly obvious is David Carradine was absolutely not an Asian man. For 1960s America, though, that detail wasn’t seen as an issue.
As cool as an adventure-of-the-week series starring Bruce Lee sounds, his daughter says the overt racism and cultural conflicts of the time as the biggest reasons he never got the green light. “He could not star in a TV show because he was Chinese, and because he had a weird accent.”
Shannon adds that she wanted keep the story set in late-1800s Chinatown to honor Bruce’s original intentions. “It was set there because that’s where my father wanted it to be set,” she explains. “He wanted to tell Chinese stories. And it was all part of his desire to have authentic representation, not just by having an Asian man be in the show, but also by telling these Chinese stories. [The show’s] a Chinese American story, really.”
The first two seasons of “Warrior,” adapted from a television treatment by Bruce Lee, just arrived on HBO Max.
Graham Barrholomew
Shannon Lee admits that making “Warrior” a genre show helps tell a Chinese American story to a wider audience. Sure, it acts as a history lesson, putting us smack-dab into the gritty streets of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, but it does so with a grindhouse production flair often unseen on the small screen. Basically, it’s a mix of “Deadwood” outlaw Western mentality and the gilded age investigative drama of “The Alienist.”
And let’s not forget the epic fight scenes. Bruce Lee’s influence is everywhere in this show, but it’s during these beautifully shot sequences that you can really feel his energy. Which make sense, considering Lee’s impact on modern-day fight cinema, and his penchant for introducing viewers to his philosophical principles while taking down hordes of enemies with his fists.
“It’s always easier to sort of feed these ideas and these thoughts in a more entertaining context so that people don’t feel like they’re being preached to or lectured to in some way,” Shannon Lee says. “And so, it was very much intentional on our part, and we were also following the lead of my father, to set this in a world where there are a lot of different layers of entertainment.
“You have all these different nods to different tropes: Classic Kung Fu theater tropes, cowboy Western tropes, as well as all these different things going on,” Lee continues. “So I don’t think using the word ‘genre’ is bad or wrong. Because you can put these ideas into something that is a genre-driven show and sort of sneak a little education in there, as well. You know, a spoonful of sugar does help the medicine.”
The first two seasons of “Warrior,” adapted from a television treatment by Bruce Lee, just arrived on HBO Max.
David Bloomer/Cinemax
For all intents and purposes, this medicine is necessary. According to Lee, it’s a common occurrence that she gets asked questions like, “What’s the Chinese Exclusion Act?” Her response, is usually one of baffled confusion: “I’m like, ‘This is your American history.’ But there are so many things like that. Unless that’s a part of your experience and your culture and your understanding, you don’t know it.”
Throughout each episode, the audience gains a better understanding of the conflicts that marginalized communities faced in America more than a century ago. In between the brutally beautiful fight scenes, themes like xenophobia, class warfare, and gender discrimination pop up again and again.
“You can look at it and say, ‘Oh, this is just a fun action show.’ But actually… in the one-hour dramatic TV genre world, not many have a substantially Asian cast where the Asian characters have such layered, three-dimensional aspects and stories that get to be told,” Lee says. “So I’m very proud of that. And that’s why I think the show is important.”
Aaron Pruner is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.read more
‘Warrior,’ Bruce Lee’s long-lost ode to the untold history of SF’s Chinatown, hits HBO Max
