Assume that we find ourselves in a very specific, recognizable alternate universe. It is almost exactly like ours, but in this world Bruce Lee never came to America. Maybe he got along fine with his father and simply followed him into Taiji and the Hong Kong film industry. Would this have affected the development of the traditional Chinese martial arts in the west?
I think there can be no doubt that the answer would be yes. On the one hand I still believe that the Chinese martial arts would have been introduced and popularized without Bruce Lee. Other Asian arts, like Judo and Karate were growing and finding a receptive audience. It is clear to me after conducting an extensive literature survey of the period (including every article published in Black Belt Magazine in the 1960s) that readers were interested in and actively seeking out information on other traditional fighting systems. Given the importance of the Chinese arts to the development of the more popular Japanese systems, and the large number of Americans coming into contact with them in Taiwan, it is clear that eventually they would have found a following in the west. I do not think that individuals like R. W. Smith or Don F. Draeger would have had any trouble finding an audience for their books without Lee.
