Since Pangu split the world apart, the Three Sovereigns ruled the age and the Five Emperors fixed the moral order, the world has been divided into four great continents: the East Continent of Spirit-Victory (Pūrvavideha), the West Continent of Cattle-Gift (Aparagodānīya), the South Continent of Jambu (Jambudvīpa), and the North Continent of Kuru (Uttarakuru).

三皇五帝 — the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of high antiquity. The 四大部洲 are the four continents of Buddhist cosmology, set around Mount Sumeru: 東勝神洲 (Pūrvavideha), 西牛賀洲 (Aparagodānīya), 南贍部洲 (Jambudvīpa — the human world), and 北俱蘆洲 (Uttarakuru). Wú lays Buddhist world-geography over the Confucian-mythic prehistory of the line before — one more easy fusion of traditions.

This book speaks only of the East Continent of Spirit-Victory. Beyond its seas lies a land called the Country of Aolai.

單表 ("tells only of") is a storyteller’s phrase, narrowing the boundless cosmos to a single continent. 傲來國 ("Aolai") is an invented kingdom; the name has no settled meaning, with a flavour of something like "haughty-come."

The country borders a great sea, and in that sea stands a famous mountain, called the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.

At last the lens reaches 花果山 — the home of the monkey-to-be. 喚為 = "is called."

This mountain is the ancestral vein of the Ten Continents and the dragon-source of the Three Isles; it rose up when the clear and turbid first divided, and took shape after the primal murk was sundered. Truly a fine mountain! There are verses to prove it. The rhapsody says:

祖脈 ("ancestral vein") and 來龍 ("the coming dragon") are terms of 風水 (geomancy): the 龍脈, the "dragon-vein" along which a landscape’s vital energy runs — and this mountain is the source of all such veins. 十洲三島 are the isles of the immortals in Daoist lore. The line ties the mountain back to the creation just narrated (清濁, 鴻濛). 真個好山！有詞賦為證 is a stock storyteller’s formula that cues an embedded set-piece poem.

Its power holds down the vast ocean; its might brings calm to the jade-green sea.

勢鎮 / 威寧 — the mountain’s force "presses down" (鎮) the ocean and its majesty "pacifies" (寧) the sea. 汪洋 = the boundless deep; 瑤海 ("jade sea") is a poetic name for the ocean. The rhapsody opens by setting the mountain against the waters that ring it.

Its power holds down the vast ocean — the tides surge in hills of silver and the fish dart to their caves; its might calms the jade sea — the waves break in snowy crests and the clam-dragon leaves the deep.

The couplet now expands each half of the opening. 銀山 = waves like silver mountains; 蜃 (shèn) is the giant clam or sea-dragon of legend, whose breath was said to raise mirage-cities (蜃樓). 淵 = the abyssal deep.

In the quarters of water and fire the earth is heaped high; at the edge of the Eastern Sea it rears a soaring summit.

方隅 = the corners or quarters of space; 崇巔 = a lofty peak. (A genuine textual variant: some online transcriptions read 高積上 for 高積土, and 木火 for 水火; the better-attested editions have 水火方隅高積土 — earth piled high where water and fire meet. This edition follows that reading.)

Cinnabar cliffs and grotesque stones; sheer walls and wondrous peaks.

丹崖 = red (cinnabar) cliffs; 削壁 = walls so steep they seem knife-cut. Tight four-character parallelism paints the rock-forms.

On the cinnabar cliff a pair of phoenixes cry together; before the sheer wall a qilin lies alone.

彩鳳 (the many-coloured phoenix) and 麒麟 (the qilin, a gentle auspicious beast) are creatures of good omen — their presence marks the mountain as numinous and blessed.

On the peak one often hears the golden pheasant calling; at the stone grottoes one watches dragons come and go.

錦雞 = the golden pheasant; 石窟 = rock caves — a quiet foreshadowing of the cave to come. Even dragons frequent the place.

In the woods are long-lived deer and immortal foxes; in the trees are numinous birds and dark cranes.

壽鹿 (deer of longevity) and 玄鶴 (the dark crane) are classic Daoist emblems of immortality; 靈禽 = numinous birds. Every creature here is auspicious and long-lived.

The jade grasses and rare flowers never wither; the green pines and kingfisher-blue cypress are forever in spring.

瑤草 = magical "jade" herbs; 翠柏 = emerald cypress. 不謝 (never fade) and 長春 (eternal spring — 長 read cháng) mark the mountain as a deathless, ever-renewing realm.

The immortal peaches bear fruit in every season; the tall bamboo keeps the clouds about it always.

仙桃 = the peaches of immortality — the very fruit Sun Wukong will later steal from the Queen Mother’s orchard. 修竹 = tall, slender bamboo (結 read jiē, "to bear fruit"); 留雲 = "holding the clouds."

A single ravine, dense with vines and creepers; on all four sides, embankments fresh with the colour of grass.

澗壑 = a mountain ravine; 藤蘿 = climbing vines; 原堤 = the level banks. The view now descends from the heights to the meadows below.

This indeed is the sky-propping pillar where the hundred rivers gather, the root of the great earth, unmoved through ten thousand kalpas.

擎天柱 = the pillar that holds up Heaven; 百川會處 = where all rivers converge; 萬劫無移 = unshifting through ten thousand 劫 (kalpas, vast Buddhist aeons); 大地根 = the root of the earth. The rhapsody ends by raising 花果山 to a cosmic axis — fitting, since the world-shaping monkey is about to be born here.