special characters

[Anand]

I have a xml like <a>     <a1>abcde</a1>     <a2>cdefdk</a2>     <b>         <b1>1234</b1>         <b2>here comes the special character &. You see it!! </b2>    </b> </a>   I am transforming it using xalan.   When i try to transform, it returns "The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference"   How can i get rid of this? Can i not pass on the special character like & to my resulting html????   Any help appreciated Anand