 I have a special affection for SOAS because it was here, it was while I was working here that I wrote Wild Swans, Three Daughters of China, the book that was largely responsible for me being here today. In the mid-1980s, Professor Pollard, head of the Far Eastern Department invited me to come to SOAS and take charge of the China part of external services. This began many memorable years in my life. We ran courses for international, courses for Chinese studies for major international companies like the Boeing and the Swire Group and for the British Foreign Office. Some of our former students are now ambassadors and council generals. Once when I was back in Beijing researching my book After Wild Swans, The Biography of Mao, the British ambassador Sir Robin McLaren gave a reception for me and invited my former students. There were quite a lot of them and we had a very happy reunion. In 1988, my mother came from China to visit me. For the first time in our lives she told me the stories of her life and that of my grandmother. Once my mother started she couldn't stop. She stayed with me for six months and she talked every day. When I was out working at SOAS she talked into a tape recorder. By the time she left London she had left me 60 hours of tape recording and I had decided to write Wild Swans. I wrote a synopsis and showed it to Peter Whitaker, head of external services at SOAS and he greatly encouraged me. My colleagues were also very very enthusiastic. They helped me by you know helped me doing my job so I could have more time for my writing. And when Wild Swans was published the immediately organized presentation at SOAS in one of the seminar groups. It was one of my very first book talks. And after Wild Swans was published I left SOAS in 1992 to focus on writing. To be a writer had been my childhood dream but I had not been able to write because when I was growing up under Mao writing was the most dangerous profession. But still when I was working as a peasant and spread manure in the paddy fields and when I worked as an electrician and checked electricity supplies on top of the poles I was always writing in my head with an invisible pen. At last at SOAS my dreams were fulfilled and I became a writer and I shall be forever indebted to this great institution. Thank you very much.