pressed to explain the concept of Vergangenheitsbew?ltigung to the puzzled Chinese teachers, they admitted that it had something to do with guilt and atonement for crimes committed during the Third Reich. However, when the Chinese teachers said there was no equivalent term in Chinese, the Germans were sur prised. Didn't the Chinese have to "deal with the past77 of their Cultural Revo lution? The embarrassed silence that ensued was indicative of the limits of intercultural competence when it comes to the appropriateness of openly dis cussing differing versions of history. As guest teachers in Taiwanese schools, the German teachers said, it was not appropriate for them to suggest parallels between, say, the East-West German conflict and the People's Republic of China (PRC)-Taiwan or the North-South Korean situation. Such