The monkeys clapped their hands and cried in praise: 'Fine water! Fine water! So this place runs all the way down to the foot of the mountain and joins the waves of the great sea.'

稱揚 is to praise (稱 here chēng), and 此處 again takes 處 as the noun chù, "place." Their delight that the stream "joins the waves of the great sea" is more than scenery: a watercourse tying a mountain to the ocean is exactly what 風水 counts as a good sign. Without knowing it, they have just praised the address before anyone has seen the house.

Then they said: 'Whoever among us has the skill to bore in, find the source, and come out again unhurt — him we shall honour as our king.'

那一個…者 is a matched pair meaning "whoever it is that…," with 那 read nà and doing the work of "whichever." 鑽 (zuān) is to bore in, to worm your way through, and 拜他為王 takes 為 as wéi, "crown him as king." Prove yourself and take the throne: an old folk-tale bargain, thrown out here on the spur of the moment, which the novel will load with a great deal of weight.

They called it out three times, when all at once, out from the press of them leapt a stone monkey, who answered the cry with a shout: 'I'll go in! I'll go in!'

Three times of asking is the folk-tale rule, and it is the third that produces a hero. 叢雜 is the jostling press of monkeys; 應聲 takes 應 as yìng, answering a call, not yīng, "ought." The volunteer is precisely the stone-born one — who still, note, has no name.

What a monkey! And this too was his doing:

好猴, "what a monkey!", is the storyteller cheering out loud. 也是他 — "it was him all along" — cues the verse that follows and gives the leap a flavour of fate rather than nerve.

This day his fair name shines forth; the hour has come, his fortune flows.

The four-line poem reads the jump as destiny arriving on schedule. 時來大運通 plays on a proverb still in daily use, 時來運轉: "when the moment comes, your luck turns." The moment has come, and his luck is in flood.

By destined bond he comes to dwell here; ordained to reign, he enters the immortal hall.

有緣 is a Buddhist term of art — 緣 is the bond of cause that draws two things together — so his arrival at the cave is appointed rather than accidental. 王遣入仙宮 is tightly compressed, read here as "destined to be king, he enters the immortal hall," the 仙宮 being the cave itself, which the verse is already dignifying as a paradise.

Watch him: he shut his eyes, crouched low, and with one heave of his body sprang straight into the waterfall's spring,

Eyes shut, knees bent, one heave, and in. 瞑目 is to close the eyes; 將 here is jiāng, the small word that marks what an action is done with — "with one heave of his body" — a wholly different job from the jiàng, "general," met earlier. 縱 (zòng) is to spring and 徑 (jìng) is straight, without stopping. Remember the gesture; he repeats it twice more, and it becomes his signature move.

then snapped his eyes open and raised his head to look — and within there was neither water nor wave, but a bright, clear span of bridge.

睜睛 is to open the eyes wide. Note the contrast with the last passage: 那裡邊 here is "in there," pointing (那 nà), where 那裡 a page ago was the question "where" (nǎ). Two characters, opposite jobs, and only the context tells them apart. 一架 uses 架 (jià) as the measure word for a bridge.

He steadied himself, settled his nerves, and looking closely again, saw that it was a bridge of iron plate.

住了身，定了神 — stopped his body, settled his nerves — is a paired colloquial idiom; 仔細 (zǐ xì) is "carefully." And what he finds is manufactured: a bridge of iron plate, the first made thing in the monkey's world. Nobody made it. That is the point.

The water beneath the bridge came rushing through a gap in the rock, pouring down inverted and screening the bridge's gateway.

沖貫 is to rush through and pierce, 石竅 the gap in the rock. 倒掛 takes 倒 as dào, "hanging upside down," not dǎo: the falling water hangs like a drape across the gateway. That image, a curtain of water over a doorway, is the whole name of the place.

He raised himself again onto the bridgehead, and walking on and looking about, found it for all the world like a dwelling-place — truly a fine spot. And this is what he saw:

欠身 is to raise yourself up, 一般 is "just like," and 所在 is a place, a spot; 但見那 cues another set-piece 賦. The telling word is buried in the middle: 人家. It does not look like a cave. It looks like somebody's home.

Blue-green moss heaped like indigo; white clouds afloat like jade; light shimmering in flake upon flake of rosy mist.

The cave gets a 賦 of its own, in lines of varying length. 翠蘚堆藍, moss heaped like indigo, and 白雲浮玉, cloud floating like jade, set a jewelled register; 煙霞, "mist and rosy cloud," is the standard weather of a Daoist grotto-paradise.

Empty windows, a quiet chamber; the smooth stone benches and slabs aglow as though in flower.

虛窗靜室 — bare windows, a quiet room — is the vocabulary of a hermit's cell. In 滑凳板生花 the polished stone benches and slabs are "growing flowers," which describes the sheen and veining of the stone, not any actual blossom.

In a dripping grotto the dragon-pearls hang clustered; winding all about, the ground is strewn with rare blossoms.

乳窟 is a dripstone cave — 乳, "milk," for the white deposits — and 龍珠, "dragon-pearls," are the rounded knobs hanging in it. Stalactites, in short, described by somebody who thought they looked like treasure. 奇葩 (葩 pā, flower) keeps the enchantment going.

By the cliff a hearth and stove keep the marks of fire; against a table, jar and flagon show the scraps of a meal.

Here the poem does something sly. Old fire-marks by the hearth, wine jars against a table, the scraps of a meal still in them — somebody lived here, and the text never says who, then or later. 傍崖 takes 傍 as páng, "beside"; 樽罍 are wine vessels (罍 léi, a large jar); 殽渣 is food waste, with 殽 read yáo (here the same as 肴, cooked food), not xiáo.

Stone seats and a stone bed, truly to be loved; a stone basin and stone bowls, more to be admired still.

Seat, bed, basin, bowls — all of stone, all already there. This list is what turns a cave into a house. 更 (gèng) is "still more," and 堪 (kān) is "worth."

And there too a stalk or two of tall bamboo, three or five sprigs of plum in bloom,

竿 (gān) is the classifier for stalks of bamboo; 修竹 is the tall slender kind. Bamboo, plum and pine are the standard companions of the recluse in Chinese painting and verse, so their arrival here does not so much describe a garden as certify a taste.

and a few pines forever wet with rain — for all the world like a household.

渾然 is "altogether," and 人家 (with 家 in full tone) is "a household." That is the 賦's closing punch: this wild grotto looks exactly like somewhere people live — which is precisely what makes it worth claiming.

When he had looked his fill, he leapt across to the middle of the bridge and gazed left and right.

看罷 (罷 bà) is "having finished looking," and 多時 is "a good while." He now crosses to the middle of the bridge, where the discovery is waiting.

There, dead in the centre, stood a stone tablet, and on the tablet, carved in a line of bold regular script, were the words: 'Blessed Land of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit; Grotto-Heaven of the Water-Curtain Cave.'

A stone tablet stands in the middle of the cave with the cave's own name already carved on it (石碣 a stele, 鐫 juān to engrave; 一行 takes 行 as háng, a line of script, not xíng). Both terms on it are Daoist technical vocabulary. 福地 "blessed land" and 洞天 "grotto-heaven" belong to a real catalogue of sacred places — ten great grotto-heavens, thirty-six lesser ones, seventy-two blessed lands. The inner-alchemy commentators, such as the Qing 《西遊記百回詳註》, take the 水簾洞 — a sheet of water hiding a bright interior — as a picture of the true self: 外暗內明, dark outside, lit within.