Academia Sinica Vice President Fan-Sen Wang received the Paju Book Award Planning Prize at the annual Paju BookSori Festival in Paju Book City, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea on September 17, 2012. Vice President Wang, who received the prize for the planning of his historical book series “New Perspectives on Chinese History”, also gave a lecture to share his planning concepts at the festival, which was held from September 15 to 23, 2012.

　　In recent years, Paju Book City, established in 2005, has become South Korea’s publishing capital. Located 30 kilometers north of Seoul, it is home to hundreds of publishing companies that handle the complete publishing process, from planning to printing and setting. The Paju BookSori Festival, which was held for the first time last year, is organized by a group of publishers from South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan. The large-scale festival offers a diverse range of exhibitions, lectures, seminars, performances, and hands on experience for book lovers, publishers and authors. Last year, it was attended by around 260 publishing companies and 300 art organizations. The awards given at the festival aim to recognize and pay tribute to publishers, authors, and book designers in the East Asia region. This year, in addition to Vice President Wang’s Chinese history series, Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library) published by Heibonsha Limited in Tokyo also won the planning prize.  

　　In 2008, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Institute of History and Philology, the founding institute of Academia Sinica, Vice President Wang, who was then Director of the Institute, exhorted historians in Taiwan and abroad to compile several series of historical books; New Perspectives on Chinese History was one such series. This historical series has been compiled in eight volumes according to topic: ancient civilization, grassroots society (or civil society), religion, gender, law, art and archaeology, technology and Chinese society, ideology and culture and daily life. Each volume consists of several theses written by eminent historians in the field of Chinese History. Up to now, six volumes of the planned eight volumes have been published and the remaining two are at the printing stage. 

　　“This prize is a complete surprise to me, I never thought of receiving it,” said Vice President Wang. “Nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult to push forward a big publishing plan in the humanities and social sciences. I sincerely appreciate all the editors-in-chief of each volume and all the authors; their efforts have made this project happen and they are the ones who really deserve the prize.” 

　　Vice President Fan-Sen Wang (Academician since 2004 and Vice President from 2010) specializes in Chinese philosophical, intellectual and cultural history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and Modern China. Over the past few years, he has gained recognition for establishing several digital archive databases and allowing their free and open access by the global academic community. He has also strengthened the Sinology research base at Academia Sinica. From 2003 to 2009, he served as the Director of the Institute of History and Philology.

　　Related websites: Vice President Fan-Sen Wang: http://home.sinica.edu.tw/en/about/fswang.html

　　Paju BookSori Festival (in Korean) http://www.pajubooksori.org/2012/main.php