"It is very appropriate that David Hawkes' Story of the Stone notebooks should have found a home at Lingnan University. One of his predecessors as Professor of Chinese at Oxford was the distinguished Lingnan University scholar， Chen Yinke， who was prevented by blindness from taking up his appointment in 1946.These notebooks testify above all to Professor Hawkes' deep love of literature， and his total commitment to the task of translating the great Chinese masterpiece Hongloumeng. Future generations of scholars will be able to fred in these notebooks materials that will be of help in elucidating the art of translation."
