Manchus, talking cats

It's the tenth day of the Chinese New Year and a lucky day to re-open your business if you're Hokkien, says Mr. Jimmy. Which explains why the doorbell rang on Saturday morning when I was in my pajamas and least expected it. He'd brought Mr. Poon and his workers, Mr. Ming and another fellow -- sinewy and nameless -- to lay the wiring for lights in the garden, and to hook up the water filter in the backyard pond.

As we walk around the garden, proposing and counter-proposing cable pathways, I learn that the Hokkien hid in the sugar cane fields on the tenth day of the new year to escape the Manchus. I'm reminded of the episode in the Wind Up Bird Chronicles where the Manchus, who are in cahoots with the Japanese, skin a guy alive in the Gobi desert and all he had to defend himself with was a baseball bat. Why? Because Haruki Murakami is whack.

Speaking of Murakami, I yawned through The Elephant Vanishes, but Kafka on the Shore, which I bought at Kinokuniya a week ago, is really funny. My favourite parts are the talking cats. He really made cats talk -- not in a condescending Dr. Doolittle way, but in the same way Leo Tolstoy made women talk. Which is to say, like women.

Sure Murakami can make cats talk, but his women are a bit cardboardish.

I'm not sure which I like better -- a man who can make cats talk, or women talk.