Bruce Lee’s death: Who was Betty Ting Pei, the rumoured lover whose bed the martial arts legend died on?
Bruce Lee died almost half a century ago, but rumours over his mysterious demise remain – as fans mourn the kung fu legend, the life of Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei, who was with him that fateful night, has been forever shadowed by his death
Over the past four decades, rumours about the death of martial arts legend Bruce Lee have never abated, even though official autopsy reports at the time concluded it was a tragic case of death by misadventure. The allegations and gossip centre on the fact that Lee’s body was found in the flat of his rumoured girlfriend, Betty Ting Pei – a Taiwanese actress working for the Shaw Brothers’ film studio at the time.
Lee’s death, at the age of just 32, would also shadow Ting’s life for years to come. Numerous unfounded rumours circulated that she was responsible for Lee's death, including the blame that Ting gave him the fatal painkiller, while others alleged that Lee died while making love to her.
Born in Taiwan in 1947, Ting comes from a family of three generations of doctors and also has eminent historical figures as relatives. Her uncle was Zhang Xueliang, the general of the National Revolutionary Army in the 1920s, while her grandfather was Bao Yulin, the chief police officer of the Beiping Police Bureau during the Warlord Era.
At the age of 20, Ting came to Hong Kong and joined the Shaw Brothers Studio. Her first film in Hong Kong was The Purple Shell (紫貝殼) in 1967, where she acted as a dance hostess. Later, she was a regular in Japanese director Umetsugu Inoue’s films, performing in musicals such as The Millionaire Chase (釣金龜) in 1969 and The Yellow Muffler (玉女嬉春) in 1972. Though the Taiwanese actress starred in various dramas, comedies, musicals and martial arts films, she was best known for her lover roles and her many steamy bedroom scenes.
As Ting recalled in an interview, it was 1972 when she first encountered Lee in a hotel in Hong Kong, along with film producer Raymond Chow Man-wai and Linda Emery, Lee’s wife. Not long after, Lee invited Ting to meet again to discuss Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江) which he was then filming.
“We have something in common, we are both genuine to people. He was a person that never tell lies,” Ting said in an interview. The two quickly became close friends and unsurprisingly, rumours spread about the nature of their relationship.
Yet sadly the happy times were cut short. On July 20, 1973, Lee was found dead on Ting’s bed. “I know what people were thinking about Bruce and me, and this made me live a nightmare for the past 10 years. I think this is unfair, not only to me, but also to Bruce because he was already dead,” Ting revealed in a TV interview in 1983, a decade after Lee’s death. She denied that Lee died when they were making love on her bed.
