On the very summit of that mountain there lay an immortal stone.

We have arrived. A 仙石 is not a "magic rock" in the fairy-tale sense: 仙 means the Daoist immortals, so this is stone steeped in their power, the kind of thing that has been quietly gathering force for an age. 正當 takes 當 in its first tone, dāng, "right at, directly on top of," not dàng.

The stone was three zhàng, six chǐ, and five cùn in height, and two zhàng, four chǐ in girth.

The units are 丈 (zhàng, ten 尺), 尺 (chǐ, roughly a foot) and 寸 (cùn, roughly an inch), so the stone stands 36.5 尺 tall and measures 24 尺 round — 圍圓 is its girth. Odd numbers to pick. The very next line explains why they are not odd at all.

Its height of three zhàng six chǐ five cùn answered to the three hundred sixty-five degrees of the celestial circuit; its girth of two zhàng four chǐ answered to the twenty-four solar terms of the regulating calendar.

按 (àn) means "matches, is modelled on." So: 36.5 for the 周天三百六十五度, the 365 degrees of the sky's yearly round, and 24 for the 二十四氣, the twenty-four solar terms that divide the farming year (政曆 is the official calendar that fixes them). The stone is not merely large. It is built to the specification of the year.

On it were nine apertures and eight holes, answering to the Nine Palaces and the Eight Trigrams.

The count goes on. 九竅, the "nine openings" of a living body, answer to the 九宮 — the Nine Palaces of the magic square (洛書), where every row, column and diagonal adds up to fifteen. The 八孔 answer to the 八卦, the eight trigrams of the Yijing. Number by number the stone is being assembled as a small working model of everything: the sky, the seasons, and the pattern of change itself.

On none of its four sides was there any tree to cast shade; yet to left and right, instead, numinous fungus and orchids set it off.

The line turns on a contrast, so the two small grammar words carry the weight: 更 reads gèng ("not even"), and 倒 reads dào ("on the contrary"), not dǎo. 芝蘭 are the lucky 靈芝 fungus and the orchid, both emblems of purity, and 相襯 (with 相 in its first-tone "mutually" sense) means they set the stone off. A bare, unshaded rock with nothing but holy plants beside it: the power here is undiluted.

For ever since the first parting of Heaven and Earth it had drunk in the truth of Heaven and the fairness of Earth, the essence of the sun and the brilliance of the moon; and having been so wrought upon for so long, it came at last to possess a spiritual awareness.

This is the sentence the whole novel grows out of. Ever since the world was split open, the stone has been drinking in four influences — 天真 and 地秀, the true breath of Heaven and the fine breath of Earth, then 日精 and 月華, the essence of the sun and the flowering of the moon (華 here huá). Keep that up long enough and you get 靈通: awareness dawning. Rock becomes mind. Everything after this is consequence.

Within it an immortal womb was nurtured, which one day burst apart and brought forth a stone egg, round and about the size of a ball.

仙胞 is an immortal womb or birth-sac, the 世德堂本 and 維基文庫 reading; some editions have 仙胎 (xiān tāi), "immortal embryo," which comes to the same thing. We follow Wikisource. 迸裂 reads bèng liè, "to burst apart" — 迸 is bèng, never bìng. 毬 is just an older way of writing 球, a ball.

Meeting the wind, it changed into a stone monkey, its five senses all present and its four limbs complete.

Wind touches the egg and it becomes a monkey: 五官俱備，四肢皆全, all five senses in place and all four limbs whole, complete from the first instant. But look at what he does not have. He is only 石猴, "the stone monkey." He earns 美猴王 by winning a cave, and receives 孫悟空 from a teacher much later still. The namelessness is not an oversight — it is the starting condition of a self that has not been made yet.

At once it learned to crawl and to walk, and made its bows to the four quarters.

便就 (biàn jiù) is "at once"; read 便 as biàn, not pián, and 了 as the neutral-tone le. The newborn's first act is a bow to the four directions — nobody taught him. Before he can speak he is already lining himself up with the cosmos, which is a fair summary of his whole career.

From its eyes there shot two shafts of golden light, striking upward to the Palace of the Dipper.

斗府 is the palace of the 北斗, the Northern Dipper, and so stands for the whole civil service of Heaven; read 斗 as dǒu (the Dipper, or a dry measure), never dòu ("to fight," properly 鬥). 射沖 is to shoot up and pierce. A newborn monkey whose stare reaches the throne of Heaven: the book is telling you at once how large he is and how much trouble is on the way.

This startled that Most Sacred One of High Heaven, the Greatly Compassionate and Benevolent, the Jade Sovereign and Great Celestial Worthy, August High Lord of the Mysterious Vault of Heaven,

The full ceremonial style of the 玉皇大帝, the Jade Emperor, laid out title by title — 高天上聖 "Most Holy of High Heaven," 大慈仁者 "the Greatly Merciful and Kind," 玉皇大天尊 "Jade Sovereign and Great Celestial Worthy," 玄穹高上帝 "August High Lord of the Dark Vault" (穹 qióng, the dome of the sky; 尊 zūn). Notice how much of it there is. Wú spends the whole novel letting Heaven's pomp deflate itself, and this is the first instalment.

who, enthroned in the Treasure Hall of the Numinous Empyrean within the Cloud Palace of the Golden Portal, had gathered his immortal ministers about him.

駕座 ("enthroned in state") is the 維基文庫 / 世德堂本 reading; many modern editions print the near-twin 駕坐 ("seated"), both jià zuò. 金闕 is the golden gate-tower of the palace and 靈霄寶殿 the Treasure Hall of the Numinous Empyrean (霄 xiāo, the high sky), often written 凌霄寶殿 elsewhere. 仙卿 (xiān qīng) are his immortal ministers. Heaven is run as a court, morning audience and all.

Seeing the golden light blazing up, he straightway commanded Thousand-Mile Eye and Wind-Following Ear to open the Southern Gate of Heaven and observe.

燄 is the 世德堂本 / Wikisource form of the now-standard 焰, flame. 千里眼 ("Thousand-Li Eye") and 順風耳 ("Ear that Follows the Wind") are Heaven's surveillance department — stock figures of popular religion, later attached to the 媽祖 cult, who between them can see and hear anything anywhere. 南天門, the Southern Gate of Heaven, is the border post between the celestial world and ours.

The two officers duly went forth beyond the gate at his command; they saw the matter truly and heard it plainly.

One character, two jobs, a few clauses apart. Here 將 is jiàng, "officer"; a moment later, in 金光將潛息, the same character is jiāng, "about to." Note also the colloquial spelling: 看的真，聽的明 uses 的 where standard writing has 得 (de) — "saw it clearly, heard it plainly." And 果 (guǒ) here means "duly, sure enough" — not its usual "fruit" or "result."

In a little while they returned and made their report, saying:

須臾 (xū yú) is the fixed phrase for "in a moment." In 回報道, 道 is the verb dào, "to say," which opens the speech that follows.

'Your servants, obeying the decree, observed and listened at the place of the golden light. It lies within the bounds of the little kingdom of Aolai, east of the sea, in the Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit.

臣, "your servant," is the self-lowering pronoun anyone uses in front of a superior. 之處 takes 處 as the noun chù, "place," not the verb chǔ. The address is the one built up in the opening passages: 東勝神洲 (Pūrvavideha, easternmost of the four Buddhist continents around Mount Sumeru), and then 傲來, the invented kingdom on its eastern sea.

There is a Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, and upon the mountain an immortal stone, and the stone gave birth to an egg.

The officers re-tell the birth we have just watched, in almost the same words. That is not clumsiness. Vernacular novels grew out of professional storytelling, where a striking event was worth hearing twice — narrator's version, then a character's — and the repetition swells the moment instead of padding it. Expect this doubling throughout the book. 花果山 is named here for the audience's benefit.

Meeting the wind it became a stone monkey, which there bows to the four quarters; from its eyes wheels a golden light that shoots up to the Palace of the Dipper.

Phrase for phrase the report mirrors the narration: 拜四方, 眼運金光，射沖斗府. Readings as before, 斗 dǒu and 沖 chōng. 那裡 here is "there" (nà lǐ), written 裡 in the Wikisource text where some editions have 里.

Now that it takes food and drinks water, the golden light is about to die away.'

服餌 (fú ěr) is to take something in; in Daoist writing it usually means swallowing elixirs, but here it is plain eating and drinking. 將 is now jiāng, "about to," and 潛息 is to sink away and stop. There is a neat logic in it: the moment the stone-born creature starts on ordinary food, his supernatural light dims. Feed a marvel and it turns into an animal. 矣 (yǐ) marks the change as good as done.

The Jade Emperor, graciously bestowing his kindness, declared: 'A thing of the world below, born of the very essence of Heaven and Earth — it is nothing to wonder at.'

垂賜恩慈 — handing kindness graciously down from above (垂 chuí, 賜 cì). 不足為異 takes 為 as wéi: "not enough to count as strange." Keep this line in mind. The god who shrugs at a stone giving birth will spend the next several chapters failing to control what it produced, and the novel never once lets the celestial bureaucracy look clever.