Looking at the effort that's gone into the garden, you begin to understand the discipline Loh applied to his debut novel, When Dining with Tigers (Indr, 2000).

In 1991, after a decade as a maths teacher in New South Wales, he applied for long-service leave topped up with holiday time. Working from morning until midnight every day for four months, Loh bashed out the first draft on a manual typewriter. After that, he revised on an 'old, small Macintosh'.

The narrator is Scholar Wu, the author of Monkey King, the 100-chapter classic that fuses Chinese fables, fairy tales and monster stories. Between debates with three rowdy animal spirit disciples - Monkey, Sandy (a water monster) and Pigsy - the scholar relates a novel about Moby, a young Chinese English teacher billeted at the Sydney home of a retired journalist called Wilson. Their philosophical discussions about the discrepancies between east and west are interrupted by the drama of the 1989 democracy protests. Thanks to Wilson's curiosity, they wind up in the square on the day.

The rapid writing gave Loh headaches every weekend, thanks to the flickering computer screen. Nevertheless, Loh, who has a bachelor's degree in English literature from Queensland University, persevered and eventually dispatched the manuscript to some professional 'novel assessors'.

They told him the book was 'very postmodern'. Loh, who moved to Sydney from Kuala Lumpur a quarter of a century ago, shrugs, then says he thinks they were puzzled. In response, he made some 'micro-changes' ... and then some major ones.

What drove him? With a rueful smile, the 61-year-old replies: 'Impending death.'

Loh's joy at being published dwindled fast. After all his effort, the media ignored the book. The book's complexity may have played a part. Even the characters can't thrash out what Wu's tale means. Sandy says it's about justice and tyranny. Pigsy insists it's about eating, drinking and fornication. Monkey professes not to know.

Laughing, Loh says When Dining with Tigers explores all those issues. At times, the author can seem as elusive as Scholar Wu, who says the reader should draw his own conclusion. He had thought of using Confucius as his narrator, but decided he was too 'dowdy Dao'.

Loh seems to hold Confucius in awe. The whole of Chinese culture and civilisation is based on Confucian teaching, he says. Regardless of whether they realise it, all Chinese are Confucians and all westerners are Christian,

he says.

Loh sums up the doctrine of the plain-speaking sage born 551 years before Christ as: 'Respect other people, and do the best

you can.'

Musing on whether today's Australians share those values, Loh says that, being go-getters, they fulfil their potential, but put too much stress on individualism.

He says he's adjusted to the Australian outlook. For instance, he now accepts that his two sons - from his 27-year marriage to Lyn, a nurse - will talk back to him at times. He pronounces himself 'very happy, very

happy: beautiful country, beautiful weather'.

As for his literary career, a second novel - tentatively titled A Murder in the Sun - is gestating, shaped by writers' group sessions he attends religiously. Loh says he wonders whether the feedback is productive. It prompts him to keep cutting and cutting.

But he regards the work- shops as more of a help than a hindrance, and has at least finished his opening chapter. He declines to outline the plot, so we'll just have to wait and see how the doubtless challenging tale unravels.