China salutes a favorite son

Bruce Lee’s daughter said Friday she’s happy that China has embraced her father with a 50-part, prime-time TV series on his life -- even though the late action star was no fan of communism.

The series currently airing on state broadcaster China Central Television, which portrays the late action star as a nationalist hero, is China’s first movie or TV drama on the late actor. When Lee made his name in the early 1970s playing characters who defended the Chinese against oppressors, China was still a closed country.

“Obviously, my father doesn’t have a lot of love for communist ideology and believed in a different outlook on life,” Shannon Lee said in an interview. “But what I do think is great is that China is embracing him as a role model. It may not be exactly in the way he would necessarily have viewed it, but at the same time, I think they recognize him as an influence in the world, which I think is great.”