Over their long and colorful history, the Chinese people have produced a variety of fascinating and useful cultural artifacts and performance inventions--from the compass and paper money to tea ceremonies and wedding parties--that have won the admiration of people around the world. They have improved living conditions for many who remain unaware of the Chinese origins of these innovations. This book's forty concise chapters serve as windows into a wide range of Chinese cultural traditions and practices. Some aspects of culture featured here include Chinese gardens, homes, and temples; calligraphy, chess, and clothing; paper cutting, seals, and musical instruments; martial arts and Peking Opera; and feng shui (auspicious design). Amply illustrated, with idiomatic phrases parsed throughout, the authors offer a road map to guide both the novice and "old hand" alike through the essential elements of Chinese culture.

Snapshots of Chinese Culture (Bridge21 Publications)

History

Yin, Zhao

Xinzhi, Cai

Asia

Bridge 21 Publications

These original essays debate two ways of theorizing social life. One way is the integrative or holistic model of thought typified in the writings of Confucius. The other, the revolutionary tradition, is suspicious of holism and harmony as principles of social thought because harmony is seen as something that can genuinely occur only when a society has rectified deeply ingrained injustice. This volume evaluates the alternative priorities of order and revolt, harmony and spontaneity, in social life.

Order and Revolt: Debating the Principles of Eastern and Western Social Thought (Bridge21 Publications)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

This publication unveils creative ideas on knowledge transfer from historical references to commercialization of cultural products. It adopts multidisciplinary, cross cultural, and experimental approaches to study the cultural industries, including art, music, popular culture, psychology, entrepreneurship, and economic studies. These scholarly thoughts and ideas were presented in the two conferences held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in the summer of 2013. The chapters critically evaluate the current situation of the cultural industries and review the underlying relationships between the different sectors in the field. By assessing the development of the cultural industries, the authors hope that market and government intervention can enhance further consolidation and minimize hindrance to the growth of creativity.

Creativity and Culture in Greater China: The Role of Government, Individuals and Groups (Bridge21 Publications)

Science & Math

This volume of original essays critically examines the intriguing interplay among major actors and venues of creative practices in contemporary East Asian cities. Its chapters closely investigate manifestations of the political and aesthetic decisions made, or not made, in the construction and representation of creative cities. The contributors give Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai special consideration.

Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia (Bridge21 Publications)

"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.

Memes, Communities and Continuous Change: Chinese Internet Vernacular Explained

Hua, Nie

Social Sciences

Jia Zhangke Speaks Out is a collection of writings by China's most acclaimed film director, Jia Zhangke. The book, originally published in 2009 by Peking University Press, contains Jia's selections of his own writings on film. While he has given numerous film-specific interviews throughout the years, his own notes on cinema, on his own production, and on Chinese culture are unknown to non-Chinese readers. This collection gives access to the key scenes of his life, films, and meetings with other filmmakers, from Hou Hsiao-hsien to Martin Scorsese. From his point of view, we get an insightful and profoundly original take on China's film history, its ruptures and failings, as well as on the post-Tiananmen filmmaking industry, with its blockbusters on one side and indie films (like his) on the other.

Jia Zhangke Speaks Out: The Chinese Director's Texts on Film (Bridge21 Publications)

Arts & Photography

Zhangke, Jia

History & Criticism

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.

The Confucian Tradition: Between Religion and Humanism

Peng, Prof. Guoxiang

This research monograph investigates the aspects of a large Tang dynasty (618-907) porcelaneous mortuary figure of an ethnic Sogdian that belongs to a small, cohesive group of Chinese ceramic figures depicting foreign wine merchants. As key merchants on the famous "Silk Road," the Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people, played a significant role in China's exposure to Western cultures. The interaction among the Chinese, the Sogdians, and the Turkic Eurasian nomads left an indelible mark on Tang China as well. Various decorative motifs on the present figure and its analogous examples are traced both chronologically and geographically to their origins. Most of these motifs can be found in the West and most can also be associated with Buddhism, which came to China by way of Central Asia.

Cosmopolitanism in the Tang Dynasty: A Chinese Ceramic Figure of a Sogdian Wine-Merchant (Bridge21 Publications)

Valenstein, Suzanne G.

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.

Philosophy and Confucian Tradition (Bridge21 Publications)

Lai, Chen

Social Stratification in Contemporary China raises and debates major sociological issues of modern and present-day China from a historical perspective. Such topics as "equality and inequality"and "acceptability of defined inequality" have been dealt with in a broad historical context since 1949 when the People's Republic was founded. The work is widely accepted as one of the most important studies trying to clarify the difficult perceptions of policy of reform and opening up that was formulated and implemented in the early 1980s in China. Professor Li Qiang is one of the leading sociologists in China.

Social Stratification in Contemporary China: Definitive Survey and Analysis (Bridge21 Publications)

Qiang, Li

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Books by Bridge 21 Publications