Bridge21 is a boutique publishing company that was founded in Los Angeles in 2011. Its primary mission is to foster connections between East Asian and English-speaking cultures on a global scale. The company is dedicated to producing original English scholarly works in the humanities and social sciences that delve into the historical traditions and modern trajectory of the region. Additionally, it focuses on translating scholarly, cultural, literary, and popular writings from the East Asian region.
Bridge21's diverse range of publications spans various fields, including literature (short stories, novels, prose, and poetry), various forms of art (such as music, cinema, and theatre), philosophy, religion, history, education, sociology, finance, business, and more. Notably, the company's contemporary Chinese literature series showcases the works of today's prominent Chinese writers. To cater to an overseas audience, Bridge21's ebook library also features publications in native languages from the region.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 285
ISBN: 9781626430914
Pub Date: 10 Mar 2023
Illustrations: 15 illustrations
Description:
Professor Xu Xiaoyue, a top-notch scholar specializing in ancient Chinese philosophies and religions, displays essential constituents of Chinese humanism before readers. According to him, key concepts such as Confucian ten virtues, Daoist Way and Buddhist metaphysical voidness play quite a significant role in shaping the Chinese humanism, which not only is historically indispensable to the creation of traditional Chinese culture but it also realistically matters to present-day China’s cultural reconstruction in the world that is being remolded by the roots.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 395
ISBN: 9781626430297
Pub Date: 10 Feb 2023
Description:
The author reviews the Confucian tradition through the two concepts, religion and humanities. Chinese scholars always adopt Zongjiao and Renwen from the ancient Chinese documents as the Chinese translation of religion and humanities. In respect of their own contexts of culture, the Chinese words and the English words share some similarities in meaning, but also have some vital differences.
This book covers the major phases of the development of Confucianism, which have a wide historical span from the Pre-Qin period to the contemporary era with a focus on Confucianism in Song and Ming dynasties. Relevant ideas of modern Western disciplines such as philosophy of religion, religious studies and theology are employed by the author as references, not criteria, to illuminate key ideas in Confucian tradition and highlight the features of Confucianism as a religious or spiritual humanism. In some chapters, the author compares the eastern thinkers and theories with those western ones.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 275
ISBN: 9781626430891
Pub Date: 10 Feb 2023
Series: Bridge21 Contemporary Chinese Literature
Description:
This book contains six works that each reflect the different styles of the author in each period of his work, paying attention to men of low status, memories of childhood, campus life, and the living conditions of Beijing’s drifters. Told in a straightforward manner, all the stories in this book are told in the first person and can be regarded together as a spiritual autobiography. Xu Zechen won the sixth Lu Xun Literature Award for short stories, and short stories have always been the focus and intention of his creation.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 428
ISBN: 9781626430839
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Illustrations: 64
Description:
This book is an academic biography of Liu Ching-chih, a renowned musicologist and translation scholar, and a prolific music critic in Hong Kong. Three Library Collections named after him are housed in the University of Hong Kong Libraries, the Hong Kong Central Library, and the Library of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the University of Heidelberg. This volume of life writing is distinguished from average biographies by its reliance on systematic analyses of an extensive array of texts and interview data.
The chapters integrate chronologies, narratives, analyses and intertextual connections, with the voice of Liu foregrounded, to present a multifaceted character whose decades-long scholarship spanned across music criticism, the history of new music in China, and translation. Several chapters document Liu’s process of working on his major book projects,. One chapter portrays Liu as a scholar-music critic, and another features his leadership at the Hong Kong Translation Society. A chapter that documents Liu’s immensely rich array of academic and cultural services in Hong Kong is followed by a linguistic and cultural profile of the scholar. The ending chapter, on the biography project itself, traces the evolution of the project, explains the research methodology, and provides a metadiscoursal account of the writing of the book. The book provides a valuable reference for those who want to know about humanities scholars, public intellectuals, music criticism, music research, and civic societies in Hong Kong, for those who are curious about the academic exchange between Hong Kong and mainland China during the 1980s-1990s, and for those who are interested in an interdisciplinary approach in life writing research and the genre of life writing concerning in particular scholars.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 136
ISBN: 9781626430877
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Description:
The financial markets have become more and more important in modern society. Their behaviour and impact relies crucially on the behaviour of market participants, aka the investors of different types. Although descriptions of the financial markets on the macro level have caught the attention of investors, regulators, and the ordinary people, how the market participants interact with each other in the financial market may provide deeper insights on how and why the financial markets behave.
This book explores the micro level of financial market behaviour. The author has been undertaking financial research, especially on the micro level, during the past two decades. The academic research on this broad area has undergone a rapid growth, with new results, methods, theories, and even paradigms, emerging and burogeoning almost every year. As a financial researcher in one of China’s top universities, the author has kept monitoring, digesting, and synthesising the research articles in the area. This book is the outcome of this decades-long routine research work of the author, covering the fundamental economic theories of how different investors receive and interpret information. The empirical results of investors' behaviour are also discussed in depth, along with the basic academic techniques of modelling investors' behaviour.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 453
ISBN: 9781626430815
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Illustrations: 10 photos (colored)
Description:
This book describes the entrepreneurial of a Chinese securities firm from the early 1990s, and reviews the 30-year history of China’s capital markets with a panoramic and coherent view of the birth and development of a securities institution. It highlights the distinctive feature of “intellectual entrepreneurship” and demonstrates the historical commitment of the intellectual community in China’s reform and opening up era. The book presents rich details of the development and evolution of the securities industry.
Whether it is an analysis of the origin of the term “investment banking” in China, or a live account of international financial events, or the journey of fund practitioners - they all give readers a glimpse into the microcosm of China’s capital markets. This book provides valuable historical information and ideas for the study of the history of China’s capital markets.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 230
ISBN: 9781626430181
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2021
Illustrations: 19 tables (b/w); 5 line diagrams (1 colour); 14 photos (b/w)
Description:
"Chinese Internet Vernacular," a complex of novel language varieties associated with the Chinese internet, is usually thought to consist of an increasing host of linguistic memes currently or once virally spread. Focusing on the vernacular's most prominent character - meaning change, this book attempts to account for the different dimensions and aspects that contribute to the memes' meaning and function variations, based on the quantitative and qualitative data meticulously collected by following and recording the various memes' diffusions on Chinese social media over four years. Through the discussion of four comprehensive case studies, what we experience as noticeable meaning change throughout a viral meme's diffusion may in fact be indexical to, under different circumstances, interpersonal communicative effects, collective identities, and community affiliations, as well as larger sociocultural values and ideologies, all of which can be reflexively performed, enacted, and calibrated in social media interactions.
With such efforts, this book hopes to do justice to the complexities and dynamics of the "Chinese Internet Vernacular" as a holistic sociolinguistic phenomenon.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781626430648
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2021
Description:
Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese culture and history as having been a capital city for ten times throughout the history. The city of Nanjing is a fine history textbook. If one pores over this city, one will evoke the history of China itself.
Every historic site in Nanjing is saturated with the character of human affairs. Whichever ruins one might visit, they are all part of a deep historical dialogue. In terms of scenery, Nanjing has mountains and rivers, enough to match any city. But the city's strength is in its history, and its unique culture. This book is a collection of prose about the unique history, culture and atmosphere of the city as well as the temperament and customs of its people, by the renowned Nanjing-born writer, YE Zhaoyan. Nanjng in the eyes of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), the Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions: "THIS METROPLITAN CITY is called Nankin…In the judgement of the Chinese this city surpasses all other cities in the world in beauty and in grandeur… It is literally filled with palaces and temples and towers and bridges, and these are scarcely surpassed by similar structures in Europe… There is a gaiety of spirit among the people, who are well mannered and nicely spoken…in the whole kingdom of China and in all bordering countries, Nankin is rated as the first city. This city was once the capital of the entire realm and the ancient abode of kings through many centuries, and though the kind changed his residence to Pekin, in the north, … Nankin lost none of it splendor or of its reputation…" - Ricci, Matteo, Nicolas Trigault, and Louis J. Gallagher. 1953. China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610. New York: Random House. pp. 268-270. "An elegant city with the European and American planning models adopted at the macro level, and the traditional Chinese style at the micro level – the most beautiful, clean and well-planned modern city in twentieth-century China." - YE Zhaoyan: remarks on the modern Nanjing city
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781626430747
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2021
Illustrations: approx. 36 illustrations (mostly maps)
Description:
Xinjiang, named in 1759 by Emperor Qianlong (乾隆 1711-1799) of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China, was ruled by the Qing from the final phase of the Dzungar-Qing Wars when the Dzungar Khanate was conquered, and lasted until the fall of the imperial dynasty in 1912. Based on rare ancient maps and historical archives, the book tells stories of Xinjiang during the Qing. It involves Emperor Qianlong, Fragrant concubine (xiangfei 香妃, Uyghur concubine married with Emperor Qianlong), Lady Catherine (the wife of the British consul-general in Kashgar at the end of the 19th century, and lived in Xinjiang for nearly two decades), Swedish missionaries (persisted in spreading Christianity for 38 years among Uyghurs who believed in Islam), Guan Gong temples (the belief in Lord Guan, a religious tradition of the Han and Manchus) and so on.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 363
ISBN: 9781626430068
Pub Date: 01 Jul 2020
Description:
Life itself has long gone unnoticed in Confucian texts since the Qinand Han dynasties, which is similarto the forgetting of Being, per se, inthe Western philosophy after theAxial Period, according to Heidegger. Today, there is a philosophical mission to return life to Confucianism, restoring and reconstructing Confucianism in the perspective of a comparison between Confucianismand Husserl's Phenomenology. The author reduces the features of life to the essence of a thing, butreturns to life as the essence of Being.
The author rejects the idea of post-philosophy in order to reconstruct the metaphysicaland the post-metaphysical gradations of Confucianism. These gradations are made along three strata in the life of human beings-no-being of anything (a life comprehension), metaphysical thinghood (the absolute Being), and post-metaphysical things (the relative beings). In this way we have a full understanding of the idea of Confucianism.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 562
ISBN: 9781626430655
Pub Date: 01 Jul 2020
Description:
A masterpiece in the study of Wang Yangming's (1472-1529) philosophy, this book adopts a holistic approach, integrating philosophical history, comparative philosophy, cultural research and historical documents. The book provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Wang's philosophy at different stages throughout its maturation so as to sketch the essential character and grand picture of Wang's philosophy. As a systematic study of Wang's philosophy, this monograph boasts a broad perspective, profound discourse and substantial historical data.
It is a perfect manifestation of the author's academic accomplishment and presents the readers with a panorama of Wang's studies. Although the book is focused primarily on Wang, its scope and methodology carry great implications for the study of Song and Ming Confucianism and even ancient Chinese philosophy as a whole.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 298
ISBN: 9781626430365
Pub Date: 19 Feb 2019
Description:
As Chinese philosophy absorbs Western influences, it need not deny its own unique sources and methods. Chen Lai argues that the introduction of Western thought to modern China in the past one hundred years will lead to the birth of a new philosophy with typical Chinese cultural features. Although an anti-traditional attitude prevails among younger intellectuals today, Confucianism is by no means dead and gone.
Philosophers are re-examining the Confucian classics with a modern critical perspective, reaffirming the ideological value of Confucianism to the spiritual life of contemporary Chinese society. This book analyses the central issues involved in the Confucian renewal and details the relevance of neo-Confucian and modern philosophers who were influenced by Confucius.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781626430525
Pub Date: 02 Nov 2017
Description:
This collection of papers from a project of the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan, unites anthropologists in an international collaborative effort to reexamine the dynamics of family, ethnicity, and the nation-state in China and in overseas Chinese society. Using ethnographic fieldwork, this book sheds light on the interactions between state, society, and identity through a variety of channels, such as family, lineage, kinship or quasi-kinship network, national frameworks such as religion association, Minority Autonomous Regions, and ethnic dress. This research demonstrates that even for the same cultural phenomenon, the discourses at the common, the elite, and the institutional levels will be adjusted based on the needs of the social context, market economy, and global networks.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781626430549
Pub Date: 30 May 2017
Description:
This book is a collection of translations from Old Photos, a Chinese bimonthly publication launched in 1996 that presents photographs and narratives from ordinary readers and professional historians in a manner that proclaims: this is our history, not the history those above would have us believe. The magazine was concerned with the everyday lives of ordinary people while also covering the momentous, often traumatic, political life of the People's Republic. It became clear it would also serve as a forum and archive for people's experiences and reflections about life in the People's Republic.
Old Photos presented an open format where readers' contributions were published alongside that of professional writers, historians', and novelists.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781626430402
Pub Date: 30 Apr 2017
Description:
Rhetorical Aesthetics approaches Chinese art and literature from a novel perspective with special interest and influence in Chinese theory since the 1990s. The author works out a practice of reading through fine literary, cinematic, and visual art examples. The monograph focuses on important literary texts from the 1950s onward, analyzes Zhang Yimou's acclaimed early films, and proposes how to understand that much vaunted and maligned of attributes: Chinese creativity.
It surveys artistic production in ways that provide direct access to an entirely uncharted universe for those who cannot read Chinese.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781626430518
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2016
Description:
This study examines a small group of highly educated Chinese who have exerted outsized influence on China's recent rise. They share one thing in common - they all left China to study in the US and subsequently returned to China to apply what they had learned. Their work has in some ways made China more like the US.
But more importantly, in adapting overseas practices to the Chinese context, they have not simply imitated or duplicated that which already exists abroad. Instead, they have invented something entirely novel, something that resides at the very heart of China's contemporary developmental experience. Based on extensive interview data collected by the author, these personal accounts open a window on the day-to-day struggles - and step-by-step achievements - of China's most prominent social entrepreneurs and societal activists.