Now the monks of the Hongfu Temple in Chang'an, great and small, where the Tang monk had lived before, saw that the tops of several pines had every one of them turned to face east, and said in astonishment: “How strange!”

Another cut. 卻說 again, and the chapter shifts to a third set of people who have been waiting: the monks of the house where the Tang monk lived before he left. 洪福寺 is where he was living in chapter twelve when the summons came. The novel has not mentioned it since. 一顆顆頭俱向東 — every single crown turned east. Not bent, not blown: turned, and all of them, and the direction is the one he would be coming from.

“How strange!”

Said twice, and the novel gives the repetition its own sentence. 哉 is a literary exclamation mark, rather formal for a monk in a temple yard staring at a tree. The doubling is how Chinese renders somebody saying a thing and then saying it again because the first time did not discharge it.

“There has been no wind tonight — how have these treetops all twisted round?”

未曾刮風 — there has been no wind. The monks eliminate the ordinary explanation first, out loud, which is exactly what people do before admitting they have seen something impossible. 扭過來, twisted round. A harder word than turned: it is what you do to a wrist.