Boqin's mother, hearing this, called out: "Child, do not go on wrangling with the elder; I have vegetarian things of my own, with which we can entertain him." Boqin said: "Where would vegetarian things come from?" His mother said: "Never you mind; I have my own vegetarian fare." She bade the wife take down the small pot, burn off its grease with fire, and scour it and scour it again, and wash it and wash it again, and then set it back on the stove. First she boiled half a pot of water for another use; then she took some leaves of mountain burnet and steeped them in water to make a tea; after that she took some yellow millet and glutinous grain and cooked up a meal, and boiled some dried greens as well. She dished up two bowls of it and brought it out and set it on the table. The old mother said to Sanzang: "Elder, pray take your meal. This is a little plain, clean fare, which I and my son's wife have prepared with our own hands." Sanzang came down and thanked her, and only then took his seat.

The mother's solution is all in the labour: take down a small pot, burn the grease out of it with fire, scour it and scour it, wash it and wash it, boil a separate half-pot of water for another use. She is not just cooking, she is decontaminating a kitchen. 山地榆, "mountain burnet," is a wild herb steeped here for a rough tea. One reading worth flagging: in 兒婦 ("son's wife") the character 兒 is the full noun "son," read ér — not the light er it takes as a diminutive in 孩兒 a few lines earlier in the same speech.

Boqin, for his part, set out a separate place, and spread it with tiger meat unsalted and unsauced, and fragrant roe-deer meat, python meat, fox meat, hare meat, and minced strips of dried venison — whole platters and bowls of it — to keep Sanzang company at his meal. He had just sat down and was about to lift his chopsticks when he saw Sanzang press his palms together and chant a sutra; and so startled was he that he dared not touch his own chopsticks, but rose hastily and stood to one side. Sanzang, when he had recited but a few lines, then bade him take his meal. Boqin said: "You are a monk who says a short-headed sort of sutra, then?" Sanzang said: "This was no sutra, but a single scroll of grace before meat." Boqin said: "You monks who have left home — what a deal of fuss you make, mumbling and murmuring even over a bowl of rice."

And beside the monk's two bowls of millet, Boqin lays out his own spread: tiger, roe-deer, python, fox, hare, dried venison, unsalted and unsauced, by the platter. Then comes the best small moment in the chapter — chopsticks halfway up, he sees his guest start chanting and freezes, then jumps up and stands to one side until it stops. 揭齋之咒 (jiē zhāi zhī zhòu) is the short invocation a monk says before eating — grace before meat, and no longer than that. Boqin, who has never seen one, files it as a suspiciously short sutra.