From Bruce Lee craze to regional hub: how China’s kung fu captured Ivory Coast

Meite Siaka wears many hats. By day, he is a senior tax official, a lecturer at the National School of Administration and deputy mayor of Kani in northern Ivory Coast.

But outside government, he serves as the founding president of the Ivorian Federation of Chinese Martial Arts (FIAMC), a group he established in 2008. He also works as a master and instructor, running several martial arts clubs.

Now he is a central figure in standardising the practice of kung fu, a Chinese martial art, and promoting its growth.

Siaka, who is around 60, started his journey during Abidjan’s craze over the films of martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

During the 1970s, long before Ivory Coast and China established formal diplomatic ties in 1983, dubbed Hong Kong action films flooded local cinemas, fuelling a widespread fascination with kung fu and Lee’s films.

“Bruce Lee movies played a role, but it was not the only factor,” Siaka said in Abidjan recently. “Hong Kong films and local television exposure also contributed significantly to the popularity of martial arts.”

The films have offered a model of discipline and resistance that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, with ripples spreading across French-speaking West Africa.

South China Morning Post