This special issue includes six articles that feature the changes in cultural communication in Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China in the early 20^(th) century in relations to the modernity of China. For the Dialogue, we invited Professor Georgette Wang from Taiwan's National Chengchi University to share with us her experiences and thoughts on indigenous communication research. As communication researchers, it is time to think beyond the dichotomy model and accept the reality that "tradition" and "modern", "local" and "international" are not clear-cut but inter-related. This issue is also enriched with two invited papers, written by Prof. Eric Ma and Prof. Clement So respectively, which summarize the major academic thoughts and achievements of Stuart Hall, one of the most influential cultural theorists of our times who passed away in Feburary 2014. The Communication Forum in this issue discusses the current trends of online journalism research in the new media era, which is written by Zhong Bu, Huang Yu and Zhou Yiying.