The Ministry of Education recently presented the Academic Award to Paul R. Katz (康豹), a renowned scholar from the United States who works at Academia Sinica. He has spent a long time researching Taiwanese traditional beliefs. He is an authority on "Wangyeh Belief" (王爺信仰) and has lived in Taiwan for more than 30 years.
Paul R. Katz (康豹) has studied Taiwanese folk beliefs for many years, and he is also an expert in "Wangyeh Belief."Photo reproduced from National Central Library
Paul R. Katz, 62, is a renowned researcher who is presently employed for the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica. When he was a college student, he began studying Chinese. He visited National Taiwan University on an exchange over the summer as a doctorate candidate at Princeton University. His classmates took him there at that time. He visited southern Taiwan and observed a lot of temples, which also arose his interest in Taiwanese traditional beliefs. He later chose "Wangyeh Belief" as the subject of his PhD dissertation and traveled to southern Taiwan to gather data.
Paul R. Katz spent a half-year residing at Donglong Palace in Donggang, Pingtung in order to thoroughly research "Wangyeh Belief."Later, the Taoist priest at the temple observed his intense devotion to studies and even expressed a desire to take him under his wing as a pupil. Paul R. Katz picked up Taiwanese while conducting fieldwork in the southern Taiwan.
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“The Burning of the King Boat” is a festival in Wangyeh Belief.Photo reproduced from Taiwan Historica website.
Paul R. Katz expressed his happiness at receiving the Ministry of Education's recent Academic Award. According to Paul R. Katz, regarding religious freedom, Taiwan is an excellent location for pertinent study. Additionally, it offers a wealth of cultural resources and its inhabitants are friendly and vivacious. a powerful human touch. More and more foreigners are expressing a desire to do research in Taiwan. Receiving this honor as a foreign scholar is encouraging for him as well, Paul R. Katz added.
