Meir Shahar is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University. He received his undergraduate degree from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and after studying Chinese in Taipei, he went on to pursue graduate studies in the United States, receiving his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992. Meir Shahar’s research interests cover the fields of Chinese religion and literature, Chinese martial-arts history, the impact of Indian mythology upon Chinese culture and, most recently, Chinese animal studies. His books include Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature (Harvard University Asia Center, 1998), and the Hebrew-Language publication The Chinese Religion (הדת הסינית) (1998).