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 Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit (Pūrvavideha), the Western Continent of Cattle-Gift (Aparagodānīya), the Southern Continent of Jambu (Jambudvīpa), and the Northern Continent of Kuru (Uttarakuru).

Two traditions in one sentence, joined without a seam. 三皇五帝, the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, are China's own legendary first rulers. The 四大部洲 are Buddhist world-geography: four continents ranged around Mount Sumeru — 東勝神洲 (Pūrvavideha), 西牛賀洲 (Aparagodānīya), 南贍部洲 (Jambudvīpa, where humans live), 北俱蘆洲 (Uttarakuru). One small textual point, since the English turns on it: the standard Buddhist Chinese for Pūrvavideha is 東勝身洲, "Superior Body," rendering the Sanskrit videha. The 世德堂本 writes 神, "spirit," and that is what is translated here. Wú lays an Indian map over Chinese prehistory and does not pause to explain himself. He never does.

This book speaks only of the Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit. Beyond its seas lies a land called the Country of Aolai.

單表, "tells only of," is a storyteller's clamp: out of a whole cosmos, we will follow one continent. 傲來國 (Aolai) is invented, and nobody has pinned its name down; the characters have a swagger to them, something like "Proud-Come."

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

And there it is — 花果山, Flower-Fruit Mountain, home to the monkey for the rest of the book. 喚為 is simply "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 from 風水. Chinese geomancy reads a landscape as a body, with 龍脈 or "dragon-veins" carrying energy along the ridges — and this mountain is where all of them begin. The 十洲三島 are the immortals' islands of Daoist legend. Then comes a stock cue: 真個好山！有詞賦為證 — "a fine mountain, and here are verses to prove it." A 賦 is a showpiece description in verse. When the storyteller reaches something worth staring at, he stops the plot and stares.

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

The mountain gets treated as a force rather than a place: its bulk 鎮 presses the ocean down, its dignity 寧 keeps the sea quiet. 汪洋 is the open deep; 瑤海, "jade sea," a poetic name for it. The 賦 opens by setting rock against water.

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.

Each half of that opening line now unfolds. 銀山: waves like silver mountains. 蜃 (shèn) is the giant clam-dragon of legend, whose breath was believed to blow whole cities into the air — which is why a mirage is still called a 蜃樓, a "clam-tower." 淵 is the abyss it rises out of.

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 means the corners of space; 崇巔 a towering peak. (A genuine fork in the text: 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 heaped high where water and fire meet — and that is what we print.)

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

丹崖 are cinnabar-red cliffs; 削壁 are walls so sheer they look knife-cut. Four characters, then four more: the rock-forms come at you in matched pairs.

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 gentle qilin usually Englished as "unicorn," are both omens of good fortune. They do not turn up on ordinary hills. Putting them here is the poem's way of stamping the mountain as holy ground.

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

錦雞 is the golden pheasant. 石窟, rock caves, is a seed planted early — the cave that matters lies a few pages ahead. And dragons come and go here as a matter of routine.

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

Deer and cranes are the two standard Daoist emblems of long life: 壽鹿, the deer of longevity, and 玄鶴, the dark crane. 靈禽 are magic birds. Every creature on the list is lucky, and every one of them lives a very long time. That is not decoration — it is the mountain's job description.

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

瑤草 are "jade" herbs, the magical kind; 翠柏 is emerald cypress. The two claims that matter are 不謝, nothing wilts, and 長春, permanent spring (長 reads cháng). Nothing dies on this mountain — which is precisely the illusion the story will take away.

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

仙桃 are the peaches of immortality, the very fruit Sun Wukong will one day raid from the Queen Mother's orchard, to everyone's cost. 修竹 is tall slender bamboo, and 留雲, "keeping the clouds," has the mist snagged in it. 結 reads jiē, to bear fruit.

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

澗壑 is a mountain ravine, 藤蘿 the vines climbing it, 原堤 the flat banks below. The view has come down off the peaks into the meadows.

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

The 賦 ends by promoting the mountain to a piece of cosmic furniture: 擎天柱, the pillar that holds up the sky; 百川會處, where every river meets; 大地根, the root of the earth — unmoved through 萬劫, ten thousand kalpas. A kalpa is a Buddhist world-age so long that the usual way of explaining it involves a mountain worn flat by a silk sleeve brushing it once a century. Extravagant praise for one hill. Not extravagant for a birthplace.