Sanzang, seeing them, stood attentively beside the gate and made his salutation. The monk hastily returned the courtesy and said, smiling, "Forgive me for not having looked up."

問訊 is the Buddhist greeting done properly: palms together, and a spoken question after the other man's welfare. 傍 is read páng, "beside." 失瞻 (shī zhān) is a set apology — "I failed to lift my eyes and see you" — and it is worth registering that the very first words anyone in this house speaks are a formula of good manners.

He asked, "Where have you come from? Please come into the abbot's quarters and take tea."

那裡 is a question here and reads nǎ, "where," not the demonstrative nà, "there." 方丈 means "ten feet square," and names the abbot's cell after the room of the layman Vimalakīrti, who is said to have fitted a multitude of visiting bodhisattvas into exactly that space. From the room the word slid across to the man, the way "the Crown" comes to mean the monarch.

Sanzang said, "This disciple is an imperial commissioner from the Land of the East, bound for the Temple of Thunderclap to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures.

欽差 (qīn chāi) is an officer sent out under imperial commission — 差 is chāi here, not chà. 弟子 (dì zǐ), "disciple," is the humble first person one uses in front of clergy. 雷音寺, Thunderclap Monastery, is the Buddha's seat on Vulture Peak and the end of the whole journey — still a very long way off.

"Arriving here as the light fails, I would beg one night's lodging of your eminent monastery."

將晚: 將 is jiāng, the adverb of "about to," the light on the point of going. 上剎 repeats the honorific from the quatrain, and 剎 is again chà. To borrow a night's lodging (借…一宵) is the ordinary traveller's idiom — and 借, "to borrow," is the verb this entire chapter turns on. Watch it.

"Come in and sit, come in and sit," said the monk. Only then did Sanzang call the Pilgrim to lead the horse in.

方, "only then," is doing careful work here. Sanzang waits for the invitation before calling his disciple: courtesy first, and the horse — with the horse's keeper — brought forward only afterwards. He is managing the introduction. The precaution is about to prove entirely insufficient.

The monk, catching sight of the Pilgrim's face, took some fright and asked, "What kind of thing is that, leading the horse?"

相貌 (xiàng mào) is countenance, and 相 is xiàng. To ask 是個甚麼東西 — "what thing is that?" — is an insult in any register of Chinese, then or now: 東西 is still the word for an object, and calling a person one is still rude. The monk cannot make himself reach for a word that would grant Wukong personhood.

Sanzang said, "Softly, softly. His temper is quick, and if he hears you call him a thing, he will take it ill. He is my disciple."

悄言: "speak low." Notice that Sanzang's warning is practical rather than moral, and it is the plainest thing said so far — not do not insult him but he will hear you. 性急 is quick-tempered; 惱 is to be provoked.

The monk gave a shudder, bit his finger, and said, "And you took on so ugly-headed, so freakish-skulled a creature for a disciple?"

寒噤 (hán jìn) is the shudder that goes through a man at a fright. In 咬著指頭 the particle 著 is zhe: the finger stays between the teeth while he talks, an ongoing state rather than something achieved. 醜頭怪腦 is a colloquial abuse-compound, "ugly of head, monstrous of skull," built on a frame Chinese uses over and over — X-headed, Y-brained — and always for something wrong with a person.

Sanzang said, "You cannot see it. Ugly he is, but he is very useful indeed."

甚 here is the adverb shèn, "very," not the shén of 甚麼. 醜自醜 concedes the entire charge in three characters — "ugly is ugly" — and then walks straight past it. Fifteen chapters have taught Sanzang exactly what his disciple is worth, and he does not spend a word arguing the point that does not matter.