Lee was born on 4 February 1901, in
Jun'an, Guangdong, in the waning years of the
Qing Dynasty. He moved to
Hong Kong, then a
British colony, and became a
Cantonese opera actor. There, he met and married
Grace Ho (1907–1996), a Chinese Eurasian and a daughter of Ho Kom-tong. They had two daughters, Phoebe and Agnes, and three sons,
Peter,
Bruce and
Robert. Lee and his wife were on a one-year US tour with the Cantonese Opera Company in 1940 when their second son
Bruce Lee was born in
San Francisco. They later returned to Hong Kong when Bruce Lee was three months old. Soon after, the Lee family led an unexpected four-year hard life as Japan, in the midst of
World War II, launched a surprise
attack of Hong Kong in December 1941 and
ruled for four years. Bruce later fathered
Brandon Lee. Their youngest son
Robert Lee, who was born in 1948, would go on to become famous in Hong Kong during the 1960s as the lead singer and founder of a popular beat band, The Thunderbirds. Lee died of a
heart attack in
Hong Kong on 7 February 1965, aged 64. He was buried at St Raphael's Catholic Cemetery at
Cheung Sha Wan in
Kowloon. ==In popular culture==