闔家相見 Welcomed into the House
老者卻才下拜，將唐僧請到裡面，即喚老妻與兒女都來相見，具言前事，個個忻喜。又命看茶。茶罷，問悟空道：「大聖啊，你也有年紀了？」悟空道：「你今年幾歲了？」老者道：「我痴長一百三十歲了。」行者道：「還是我重子重孫哩。我那生身的年紀，我不記得是幾時；但只在這山腳下，已五百餘年了。」老者道：「是有，是有。我曾記得祖公公說，此山乃從天降下，就壓了一個神猴。只到如今，你才脫體。我那小時見你時，你頭上有草，臉上有泥，還不怕你；如今臉上無了泥，頭上無了草，卻像瘦了些，腰間又苫了一塊大虎皮，與鬼怪能差多少？」一家兒聽得這般話說，都呵呵大笑。老者却才下拜，将唐僧请到里面，即唤老妻与儿女都来相见，具言前事，个个忻喜。又命看茶。茶罢，问悟空道：「大圣啊，你也有年纪了？」悟空道：「你今年几岁了？」老者道：「我痴长一百三十岁了。」行者道：「还是我重子重孙哩。我那生身的年纪，我不记得是几时；但只在这山脚下，已五百余年了。」老者道：「是有，是有。我曾记得祖公公说，此山乃从天降下，就压了一个神猴。只到如今，你才脱体。我那小时见你时，你头上有草，脸上有泥，还不怕你；如今脸上无了泥，头上无了草，却像瘦了些，腰间又苫了一块大虎皮，与鬼怪能差多少？」一家儿听得这般话说，都呵呵大笑。
逐句解 Line by line
The old man then made his bow, invited the Tang monk within, and at once called his aged wife and his children to come and meet the guests; he told them all that had passed, and every one of them was glad.
Recognition done, the man becomes a host: bow, invitation, wife and children summoned, the whole story told again for the household. 將 marks what the verb acts on, read jiāng; in 都來相見, 'all come to meet', 都 is dōu and 相 takes its mutual sense, xiāng.
He ordered tea; and when the tea was done, he asked Wukong, "Great Sage, you too must be well on in years?"
Tea first — 看茶, 'see to the tea', is the opening move of any Chinese reception, then and now. The polite enquiry after the guest's age that follows it is the opening move of a comic routine.
Wukong said, "And how old are you this year?" The old man said, "I have foolishly reached one hundred and thirty."
A hundred and thirty years old, and being asked his age by a monkey. 痴長 is a self-deprecating way of naming your years — 'I have foolishly got to' — and 長 is read zhǎng.
The Pilgrim said, "Then you are but my great-great-grandchild.
The punchline: you are my 重子重孫, grandchild several times over. 重 here means 'repeated, layered' and is read chóng, not zhòng, 'heavy'.
The age of my very birth I cannot recall to what time it belongs; but here at the foot of this mountain alone I have already spent five hundred years and more."
And here is the strange thing about him. Asked his age he cannot answer, because he does not know when he was born and has never thought to wonder. The only date he is sure of is the sentence: five hundred years at the foot of this mountain. 那 reads nà; 記得, 'remember', takes 得 as de.
The old man said, "True, true. I remember my grandfather saying that this mountain came down from Heaven and pressed a divine monkey beneath it.
The old man can corroborate, and the way he does it is quietly enormous: his grandfather told him about the mountain that fell out of the sky. The monkey's punishment is old enough to have become a family story handed down. 降下, 'came down', reads 降 as jiàng.
Only now have you got free of it.
'Only now have you got free.' Between the grandfather's telling and this evening lie several human generations, and the sentence outlasted all of them.
When I saw you in my childhood there was grass on your head and mud on your face, and still I was not afraid of you;
Grass on his head, mud on his face, and a small boy who was not frightened. It is the homeliest possible witness to the marvel, and worth more than any amount of description.
but now the mud is gone from your face and the grass from your head, and you look rather thinner, with a great tiger-skin bound at your waist besides — how much, then, do you differ from a goblin?"
Then the teasing turns: washed, shaved of his weeds and wrapped in a tiger skin, he now looks — if anything — more like a goblin than he did before. 差多少, 'differ by how much', reads 差 as chà.
The whole family, hearing this kind of talk, all burst out laughing.
And the whole family laughs, which is the sound of a household deciding it is not afraid any more. 聽得 takes 得 as de; 都, 'all', is dōu.
With recognition achieved the chapter settles into a warm domestic interlude. The old farmer brings the travellers indoors, presents them to his wife and children and serves tea — the ordinary rituals of hospitality the pilgrimage will meet again and again at wayside households for the rest of the book.
The centrepiece is a comic dialogue about age. The host, who is a hundred and thirty, politely supposes the Great Sage must be getting on; Wukong, whose imprisonment alone ran five centuries, cheerfully demotes him to grandchild several times removed. The joke rests on a real gap in kind, not degree — a half-mythical span of years set against an ordinary human one, however long.
Then the old man's memory grounds it: a boy who once saw the grass-grown, mud-caked prisoner and was not afraid, and a grandfather who told him where the mountain came from. His teasing that the cleaned-up, tiger-skinned monkey looks more goblin-like than ever sets the whole household laughing. It is a moment of ease before the winter road and the robbers waiting on it.