The author Lu Xun, who gave up a career in medicine for one in literature, once wrote an essay lampooning the Chinese herbal medicine profession. A traditional doctor, claiming to be a student of a famous practitioner in Shaoxing, treated Lu's father, who was suffering from dropsy. His prescription called for "a pair of crickets, each being the first and only mating partner of the other," "drum skin pellets," and the like. Lu wrote of the former: "It seems that even insects have to observe traditional marriage virtues, and if they 'remarry' they lose their qualification to be ground into medicine." As for the drum skin, "it must be that since the taught drum skin is broken, it would be just the thing to reduce the swelling."

History is a constant process of reassessment.

At the time of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, there were calls for "complete Westernization"-especially adoption of Western science and democracy. A couple of idealistic students from that era met, fell in love, and married. Later, to commemorate that time, they selected a name for their daughter that alluded to the May Fourth era. Fittingly enough, this daughter became well known in the West as a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology. Yet, she ultimately returned to study the Chinese medicine that intellectuals of her parents' generation had abandoned.

Crossing boundaries will surely be increasingly important in the next century.

Western medicine stresses the scientific method. It therefore excludes Chinese medicine, which relies on bodily forces that-in the past-could not be scientifically measured. But today, in the face of cancer, AIDS, and other diseases, the limits to Western medicine are apparent. Thus there is now a "third stream" that attempts to combine East and West, and does not eschew looking to the Chinese tradition for answers. This could well become a major trend in medicine in the next century. To find out more, see the three articles on Chinese medicine in this month's cover story.

There is now a dialogue between Western and Chinese medicine. And we are being challenged by history to build similar bridges across gaps in non-science fields as well.

Take Taiwanese language policy for example. After WWII, to eradicate the lingering influence of Japanese colonialism, the Nationalist government that came to Taiwan banned the speaking of Japanese. However, in an effort to make Taiwan identify with the culture of the "mother country"-China-the government also banned the use of the local Taiwanese dialect. Today, as identification with Taiwan as one's "homeland" surges, the use of dialects has come to identify groups and to symbolize identification with Taiwan (as opposed to China).

But history teaches us that there is nothing but disaster in dividing the world into "us" and "them." Cross-cultural interaction alone can enrich our spiritual civilization. Can Taiwan build a lively "mother tongue" environment that encourages inter-cultural stimulation? This is an issue to test the wisdom of the current generation. We explore these and other questions in a series of articles this month: "Don't Be An LKK!," "What is 'Taiwanese' Language?" and "Who Here Can Speak Taiwanese?"

The process of crossing boundaries is just beginning. Dialogue is both inevitable and necessary.