The stone ape, seated in state above them, said: 'Gentlemen — it is said, "a man without good faith, I know not what he is good for."

He is sitting above them before any vote is taken: 端坐上面 already puts him in a ruler's posture, and 呵 (= 啊, read a) is the little sound tacked on when you're calling out to someone directly — "Gentlemen, hey!" Then comes the killer move — he quotes Confucius. 人而無信，不知其可 is Analects 2.22 (為政): "a man without good faith — I don't know what he's fit for." A wild animal clinching a throne by citing the Sage on keeping your word is exactly the sort of learned joke an educated Ming reader was meant to enjoy out loud.

You yourselves just said that whoever had the skill to get in and out again unhurt should be made king.

才說 (cái shuō) is "you just said." 進得來，出得去 uses 得 (de) as the potential infix: able to get in, able to get out. He is holding them to the exact wording of their own offer, which is what makes the Confucius quotation land.

Now I have gone in and come out, come out and gone in;

In and out, out and in — the phrasing doubles back on itself, mock-formal, like a lawyer laying out the evidence point by point. He is enjoying himself.

I have found you this grotto-heaven where you may sleep soundly and safe, each enjoying the comforts of a home — why not crown me king?'

安眠穩睡, sleep soundly and safe, and 各享成家之福, each enjoy the blessings of a settled home, recast the cave as a gift he has conferred. Notice the argument has quietly moved on from "I met your terms" to "I did you a favour." (不 takes its bú tone before the falling tone of 拜.)

Hearing this, the monkeys submitted without a word of dissent; one by one, ranged in order of age, they bowed upward in homage and all hailed him 'Thousand-Year Great King.'

A whole court appears in one sentence. 拱伏無違 is hands clasped, bodies down, nobody dissenting (拱 gǒng, 伏 fú); 序齒排班 is ranked by age and drawn up in files. 千歲大王, "Thousand-Year Great King," is the correct address for a prince — a thousand years for a prince, ten thousand for an emperor. And note 朝上 reads 朝 as cháo, "facing, paying court to," against the zhāo, "morning," a few lines below.

From that time the stone ape mounted the throne, put the word 'stone' aside, and was thenceforth called the Handsome Monkey King. There is a poem to prove it. The poem says:

He drops a word from his own name. 將 is jiāng again, this time marking the thing acted on — he took the character 石 and hid it — and 字兒 carries the diminutive 兒 (er). Losing "stone" to become simply the 美猴王, the Handsome Monkey King, is his first act of self-fashioning: the first name he picks rather than one he is handed. 有詩為證, "there's a poem to prove it," is the storyteller's usual way of bringing on a verse of comment.

The three yang lines in concord bring forth the host of living things; the immortal stone's womb held the essence of sun and moon.

三陽交泰 points to hexagram 泰 (Peace, ䷊), whose three lower unbroken lines put Heaven and Earth in communication — hence spring, hence things starting to live. You will still see the New Year greeting 三陽開泰 pasted on doorways. The second line takes us back to the stone drinking in sun and moon at the birth: the poem is reviewing the whole story so far.

Borrowing an egg, it became a monkey and completed the Great Way; lending him a name and surname to match the elixir's making.

Here the poem shifts into the language of inner alchemy (內丹) — the Daoist practice that treats the body itself as the laboratory and the elixir as something refined inside it, rather than brewed in a pot. 假 is jiǎ, "by means of, borrowing," and 丹 (dān) is the elixir. So the monkey's birth and his naming are not simply events in a life. They are stages in a process: steps in the making of a self.

Looked at within, it is unknowable, being without form; met with without, it plainly takes on shape.

A paradox with both traditions in it. Look inside and there is nothing to find, because there is 無相 — no mark, no form, the Buddhist animitta (相 xiàng). Meet it from outside and it plainly has a shape. Formless within, manifest without: this is the 心性 reflection that Andrew H. Plaks and Anthony C. Yu both identify as the core of the novel's allegory.

In every age, all men belong to this — calling themselves king, calling themselves sage, ranging free.

Now the poem turns on the reader. 歷代人人皆屬此 — in every age, everyone belongs to this (屬 shǔ): the formless-yet-formed nature is not the monkey's peculiarity, it is yours. The closing line is dry about the consequences. People call themselves kings, call themselves sages, and range about as they please (縱橫 zòng héng). The monkey's new title is the first of many in this book, and not one of them will survive scrutiny.

The Handsome Monkey King led his band of gibbons, macaques, and horse-monkeys, assigning them ranks of ruler, minister, and aide.

獼猴 and 馬猴 are kinds of monkey, the macaque and the "horse-monkey." The joke is in 君臣佐使: sovereign, minister, assistant, envoy. It sounds like court organisation, and it is — but the phrase comes from pharmacology, where it names the four roles ingredients play in a prescription, the chief drug and its supporting cast. Given the alchemy in the poem just above, staffing a monkey court out of a recipe's vocabulary is a very neat piece of wit.

By morning roaming the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, by dusk lodging in the Water-Curtain Cave, all of one accord and one heart,

朝遊…暮宿, roaming by morning and lodging by dusk, reads 朝 as zhāo, "morning" — the opposite reading to 朝上 (cháo) a few lines back: the same character twice in one passage, doing two different jobs. 合契同情 is "of one accord," 契 being a tally or covenant, the two halves that fit.

not joining the flocks of flying birds nor following the kinds of running beasts, king on his own — and his joy knew no bounds. And so:

Not birds, not beasts — the monkeys are now their own order of creature, which is a small declaration of independence. Watch 不 change tone twice in one line: bú before the falling tone of 入, then bù before the rising tone of 從. 不勝歡樂, joy they cannot contain (勝 shèng), echoes the 喜不自勝 of the previous passage.

In spring he gathered the hundred flowers for his food; in summer sought out the fruits to make his living.

The closing quatrain runs the new kingship through four seasons, a standard shape for poems about the good life away from the world. Flowers in spring, fruit in summer, everything foraged: no farming, no trade, no work.

In autumn he reaped taro and chestnuts to see out the season; in winter foraged Solomon's-seal to pass the turning year.

芋栗 are taro and chestnuts. 黃精 (huáng jīng, Solomon's-seal) is a root long prized in Daoist dietetics as a food of long life — an apt winter forage for a monkey who does not yet know that he wants to be immortal. 度歲華 is "to pass the year's flower," to see the seasons out.