遙見廟宇 The Shrine Sighted from the Road
三藏在馬上遙觀，忽見路傍一座莊院。三藏道：「悟空，前面人家，可以借宿，明早再行。」行者擡頭看見道：「師父，不是人家莊院。」三藏道：「如何不是？」行者道：「人家莊院，卻沒飛魚穩獸之脊，這斷是個廟宇庵院。」三藏在马上遥观，忽见路傍一座庄院。三藏道：「悟空，前面人家，可以借宿，明早再行。」行者擡头看见道：「师父，不是人家庄院。」三藏道：「如何不是？」行者道：「人家庄院，却没飞鱼稳兽之脊，这断是个庙宇庵院。」
逐句解 Line by line
Sanzang, gazing out from horseback, caught sight all at once of a farmstead beside the road.
遙觀, "to gaze afar." 路傍 stands for 路旁, "beside the road," and the graph 傍 is accordingly read páng. 莊院 is a walled farm compound.
Said Sanzang: "Wukong, there is a household ahead. We may beg a night's lodging there, and go on tomorrow at daybreak."
借宿, "to borrow a night's lodging." The monk's wants are, as ever, bodily and immediate; it was hunger and cold he complained of when a Bodhisattva was being summoned.
The Pilgrim raised his head, looked, and said: "Master, that is no farmstead."
擡頭看見, "raised his head and saw." Eyes that can catch a dragonfly at a thousand 里 are put here to a purely domestic use.
Said Sanzang: "How is it not?"
The monk's habitual scepticism, which this chapter has thoroughly taught the reader to distrust.
Said the Pilgrim: "A farmstead has no flying fish and no crouching beasts along its ridge. This is certainly a temple or a hermitage."
飛魚穩獸 are roof-ornaments: the fish and beast figures ranged along the ridge of a temple or an official hall, and forbidden by sumptuary custom to a common dwelling. 脊 (jǐ) is the roof-ridge; 庵院, a small hermitage. Wukong reads a roofline the way a clerk reads a title-deed.
A brief exchange, and a quietly telling one. Sanzang sees a farmhouse and thinks of supper; Wukong looks at the roofline and reads the sumptuary law written along it. Flying fish and crouching beasts on the ridge-tiles were the prerogative of temples and official halls, never of a peasant's house — the kind of fact a monkey learns by climbing on roofs rather than by studying ritual codes. The disciple who cannot restrain his temper is, again and again in this chapter, the one who actually sees what is in front of him.