星星之火 A Spark Burns a Field
這正是星星之火，能燒萬頃之田。須臾間，風狂火盛，把一座觀音院，處處通紅。你看那眾和尚，搬箱擡籠，搶桌端鍋，滿院裡叫苦連天。孫行者護住了後邊方丈，辟火罩罩住了前面禪堂，其餘前後火光大發，真個是照天紅燄輝煌，透壁金光照耀。这正是星星之火，能烧万顷之田。须臾间，风狂火盛，把一座观音院，处处通红。你看那众和尚，搬箱抬笼，抢桌端锅，满院里叫苦连天。孙行者护住了后边方丈，辟火罩罩住了前面禅堂，其余前后火光大发，真个是照天红燄辉煌，透壁金光照耀。
逐句解 Line by line
This was indeed a case of the little spark that can burn ten thousand acres of field.
星星之火，能燒萬頃之田 — "a spark can burn ten thousand qǐng of field" — is proverbial, descending from the 《尚書》 by way of common speech, and it survives today in the slogan about a single spark starting a prairie fire. It is prose, not verse, though its shape invites the mistake. The spark, one notes, was a cassock.
In a moment the wind was wild and the fire high, and the whole Guanyin Monastery glowed red from end to end.
須臾間 is "in the space of a moment." And the name of the monastery is set down at full length — 觀音院, the Guanyin cloister — at precisely the moment the fire takes it.
See the monks: hauling boxes and carrying baskets, snatching up tables and clutching cauldrons, and the whole compound loud with the cry of misery.
Four verbs of frantic salvage: 搬, 擡, 搶, 端. And what they carry out is boxes, baskets, tables, cooking-pots. Nobody is recorded carrying out a sūtra or an image, and nobody at all goes to the meditation hall where two guests are sleeping.
Sun the Pilgrim guarded the abbot's quarters behind; the fire-shield covered over the meditation hall in front.
The sentence is a balance-sheet. Two structures are saved, and the text names them: the 方丈 where the cassock lies, and the 禪堂 where Sanzang sleeps. 罩罩住 — the noun turns into its own verb, the shield shielding.
Everywhere else, before and behind, the fire blazed up mightily — truly, a red flame lighting heaven in splendour, a golden radiance shining through the walls.
The description closes on light, in the matched pairs it has used throughout: 照天紅燄輝煌，透壁金光照耀, a red flame lighting heaven, a golden radiance shining through the walls. And the vocabulary is precisely that of the cassock being shaken open — 紅光滿室，彩氣盈庭. The radiance that filled this courtyard has come back to it as fire.
Ninety characters of aftermath, and the novel does not raise its voice once. The monks run about saving their furniture — boxes, baskets, tables, cooking-pots — and the compound fills with the sound of 叫苦連天, wailing that reaches to heaven. Not one of them, so far as the text records, gives a thought to the two men shut in the meditation hall, whom they had deliberately left no door to escape by. They are not even wicked here. They are simply, entirely, taken up with their things, which is what they have always been.
The last sentence is the cruellest in the chapter, and it works by echo. When the cassock was shaken open: 紅光滿室，彩氣盈庭 — red light filled the room, coloured vapour brimmed the courtyard. Now: 照天紅燄輝煌，透壁金光照耀 — red flame lights heaven, golden radiance shines through the walls. Same court, same colours, same brilliance, a third of the chapter apart. The monks looked at the first light and wanted to own it; the second light is the first one answering. Wú Chéng'ēn has arranged for the burning of the monastery to be described in the exact vocabulary of the treasure that burned it.