It was also that his luck had come and his time was ripe: after he had mounted the wooden raft, for days on end a strong southeast wind blew,

運至時來 ('his fortune arrived, his moment came') frames what follows as providential — the same idea as the 'heaven-sent wind' of the departure poem. The southeast wind blows him, fittingly, toward the northwest. 栰 = 筏 (a raft).

and carried him to the shore in the northwest — and this was the land of the Southern Continent of Jambudvīpa.

The wind delivers him to 南贍部洲 (Jambudvīpa, the southern continent of Buddhist cosmography) — the human world he had been told the deathless masters inhabit. In the four-continent scheme he has crossed from his native 東勝神洲 in the east.

Testing the water with his pole, he chanced on a shallows, abandoned the raft, and leapt ashore.

持篙試水 ('sounding the water with his pole') and 偶得淺水 ('chancing on a shallows') are the 維基文庫 reading; some editions read 持栰近岸 ('bringing the raft to shore'). He lands with a comic practicality, testing the depth before he jumps.

There he saw people along the shore catching fish, hunting geese, digging clams, and panning salt.

The shore folk are at humble coastal trades: 捕魚、打雁、穵蛤、淘鹽 ('catching fish, shooting wild geese, digging clams, panning salt'). 穵 (wā) is a variant of 挖, 'to dig'; 蛤 (gé) a clam; 淘 (táo) 'to wash out, to pan.'

He went up close, played a trick, and pulled a fierce tiger-face,

弄個把戲 ('played a trick'). 妝個𡤫虎 means to put on a fierce, beast-like grimace to startle the onlookers (妝 zhuāng, 'to disguise oneself as'). The graph 𡤫 (read qiā) is a rare one preserved in the 維基文庫 and 識典古籍 texts; other editions print a different form (大紀元 describes a graph combining 齒, 可, and 女), all for the same sense of a frightening, tiger-like face.

so frightening them that they dropped their baskets and threw down their nets and scattered in flight.

嚇得 ('frightened them so that'; 嚇 xià). The fishermen 丟筐棄網 ('drop their baskets and abandon their nets') and bolt — the first of the novel's many scenes of ordinary mortals terrified by the monkey.

Seizing one who could not run, he stripped off the man's clothes and, imitating people, put them on himself.

跑不動 ('unable to run,' the 不 in its bú sandhi before the falling tone of 動). 剝了他的衣裳 ('stripped off his clothes'; 剝 here colloquial bāo, 裳 the neutral-tone shang). The would-be immortal's first human act is a small robbery — a wry touch.

Swaggering along, he passed through districts and prefectures, and in the marketplaces learned human manners and human speech.

穿州過府 ('passing through districts and prefectures') and 市廛 ('the market quarter,' 廛 chán, a tradesman's stall or plot) place him in the bustle of human towns, where he apes 人禮 and 人話, human manners and human talk.

Eating by day and lodging by night, with single-minded purpose he sought after the Way of the Buddhas, immortals, and holy sages, and a recipe for deathless long life.

朝餐夜宿 ('eating by day, lodging by night'; 朝 zhāo, morning, 宿 sù, to lodge) and 覓個…之方 ('to seek out a recipe for…'; 覓 mì) keep his true purpose in view beneath the human disguise: he is still after 長生不老 (長 cháng), deathless long life.

But he saw that the people of the world were all folk bent on fame and profit, and not one among them cared for his own life and destiny. It was just as the lines say:

為名為利 ('for fame, for gain'; 為 wèi, 'for the sake of') and 為身命者 ('one who [cares] for his own life,' 身命 the body-and-life, here one's true spiritual welfare) set up the poem's satire: the world toils for everything except the one thing the monkey seeks.

Striving for fame, snatching at gain — when will it ever cease? Up early, abed late, never their own masters.

The poem is a stock 'vanity of the world' satire. 爭名奪利幾時休 ('the strife for name and gain — when will it end?'; 奪 duó, 'to snatch') and 早起遲眠不自由 ('early to rise, late to bed, never free'; 不 in its bú sandhi before 自) indict the restlessness of ambition.

Astride a donkey or mule, they pine for a fine steed; holding a chancellor's office, they covet a princedom.

騎著驢騾思駿馬 ('riding a donkey or mule, longing for a fine steed'; 驢 lǘ, 騾 luó, 駿 jùn) and 官居宰相望王侯 ('a chancellor coveting a princedom'; 相 here xiàng, the minister, 侯 hóu, a marquis) are paired images of insatiable craving — never content with what one has.

They fret only over food and clothes, deep in their toil — what do they fear that Yama will come to claim them?

耽勞碌 ('absorbed in toil'; 耽 dān, to indulge, 碌 lù). 何怕閻君就取勾 — 'caring nothing that Yama will soon come to claim them'; 取勾 (= 勾取) is the underworld's summoning of a soul, its name 'hooked' and struck from the register of the living. The line ties the worldly satire back to the death-fear that drives the monkey.

Bequeathing to sons and shielding grandsons, scheming after wealth and rank — and not a single one will turn his head.

繼子蔭孫 ('bequeathing to sons and shielding grandsons'; 繼 jì and 蔭 yìn, 'to benefit by privilege,' each taking the next word as object — 子 here the full-tone zǐ, 'son') names the dynastic ambition that keeps men from ever stopping. 肯回頭 ('willing to turn the head back') carries a Buddhist undertone — 回頭 as turning from delusion toward awakening, which not one of them will do.

The Monkey King sought after the immortals' Way but had no luck to meet them. Through the Southern Continent of Jambudvīpa,

參訪 ('to seek out and call upon,' a term for visiting teachers; 參 cān). 無緣得遇 ('lacked the karmic affinity to meet them') — in the human world the masters are not to be found; the right 緣 (yuán, karmic bond) lies elsewhere.

threading along the Great Wall and roaming the little counties, eight or nine years slipped by before he knew it.

串長城，遊小縣 ('threading along the Great Wall, roaming the little counties'; 串 chuàn, to pass through in sequence) sketches a wide, fruitless wandering. 不覺八九年餘 ('eight or nine years and more slipped by unnoticed') compresses most of a decade into a clause — the long, patient prelude to his real finding.