When we celebrate the Spring Festival 2018, the traditional Chinese new year, it is our pleasure to release the Special Issue on Pain and Itch. The cover image is illustrating a Chinese traditional myth "Hou Yi Shooting the Sun" (Hou Yi She Ri). Hou Yi is a hero who shoots down nine suns to save the people from scorching heat, symbolizing the efforts of scientists to investigate pain and itch both at physiological and pathological conditions, in the aim to find out effective and safe treatments for pain and itch. (Cover art by Dr. Zhirui Liu).