Soon enough the bamboo tapped as the waning moon went down, and the cock crowed as the dawn clouds formed. The monks rose and set out tea-water and the early meal. Xuanzang then donned his cassock, went up to the main hall, and before the Buddha made his obeisance, saying: "Your disciple Chen Xuanzang goes to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures; but these fleshly eyes are dull and deluded, and cannot know the living Buddha's true form. Today I vow: on the road, wherever I come upon a shrine I shall burn incense; wherever I meet a Buddha I shall bow to the Buddha; wherever I meet a stūpa I shall sweep the stūpa. I only pray that our Buddha in his mercy will soon reveal his golden body of one zhàng six chǐ, and bestow the true scriptures, to be handed down in the Eastern Land." His prayer done, he returned to the abbot's quarters and took the meal. When it was finished, his two attendants made ready the saddle-horse and urged the journey on. Sanzang came out of the mountain gate and took his leave of the monks; the monks could not bear to part from him, and escorted him a full ten lǐ before they turned back, their eyes brimming. Sanzang then went straight on toward the west. It was just that late-autumn weather, and this was the sight:

Xuanzang makes a vow before setting out, and it is built to be memorable: 遇佛拜佛，遇塔掃塔 — "meet a Buddha, bow to the Buddha; meet a stūpa, sweep the stūpa." The matched shape is what marks it as ritual speech rather than conversation; you can hear that it is meant to be kept. 丈六金身 is the "golden body of one zhàng six chǐ" — the standard iconographic height of a Buddha image, around sixteen Chinese feet or five metres. The units stay untranslated: 丈 is zhàng, and ten of the smaller unit chǐ make one of them; 里 (lǐ), the Chinese mile, is left as it stands too — the monks escort him a full ten lǐ before turning back in tears.

About a few villages the trees are bare, the reed-flowers shattered; on a scattering of maples and poplars, red leaves come tumbling down.

What follows is a 賦 — a rhapsody, the loose accumulating form the novel uses when it wants to soak in a scene rather than move through it. Deep autumn, and everything is coming apart: 蘆花 (lú huā), the white plumes of reeds, are "shattered" by wind and frost, and the maples and poplars of 楓楊 are dropping their reddened leaves.

On the road, through mist and rain, old friends grow few; the yellow chrysanthemums are lovely, the mountains' bones are spare, the waters cold, the lotus broken, and the traveller worn and wan.

山骨 (shān gǔ), the "bones of the mountains," is bare rock showing through now that the foliage has gone — the kind of image that survives translation intact. 荷破 is the lotus "broken," its late-season leaves collapsing. Then the metre suddenly shortens into three-character bursts — 黃菊麗，山骨細 — which is the rhapsody quickening its pulse, a trick the form uses to keep a long description from settling.

White duckweed and red knotweed lie like snow beneath the frosty sky; the sinking glow and a lone wild duck fall through the vast heavens.

落霞孤鶩 — "sinking sunset-glow and a solitary duck" — is a deliberate lift from one of the most famous lines in Chinese prose, Wang Bo's 滕王閣序 (Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng). Dropping it here is like working a line of Keats into a thriller: the audience is meant to catch it and feel the lift. 長空 (cháng kōng) is the wide open sky.

Faint and dim, the wild clouds fly; the swallows depart, the guest-geese arrive, and their clamouring, plaintive cries shiver the night.

玄鳥 (xuán niǎo), the "dark birds," are swallows, which leave in autumn; 賓鴻, the "guest wild-geese," arrive with the cold. One set going, one set coming, and the season turning between them. 嘹嘹嚦嚦 is pure sound — four characters imitating the sharp broken crying overhead.