變作蜜蜂 The Pilgrim Becomes a Bee
卻說三藏師徒安歇已定。那行者卻是個靈猴，雖然睡下，只是存神煉氣，朦朧著醒眼。忽聽得外面不住的人走，查查的柴響風生。他心疑惑道：「此時夜靜，如何有人行得腳步之聲？莫敢是賊盜，謀害我們的？」他就一骨魯跳起，欲要開門出看，又恐驚醒師父。你看他弄個精神，搖身一變，變做一個蜜蜂兒。真個是：却说三藏师徒安歇已定。那行者却是个灵猴，虽然睡下，只是存神炼气，朦胧着醒眼。忽听得外面不住的人走，查查的柴响风生。他心疑惑道：「此时夜静，如何有人行得脚步之声？莫敢是贼盗，谋害我们的？」他就一骨鲁跳起，欲要开门出看，又恐惊醒师父。你看他弄个精神，摇身一变，变做一个蜜蜂儿。真个是：
逐句解 Line by line
Now, Sanzang and his disciple had settled themselves to rest.
安歇已定 — the thread the storyteller set down at the end of the loan is picked up again exactly where he laid it.
But the Pilgrim, being a monkey of spirit, though he had lain down, was only nourishing his spirit and refining his breath, drowsing with his eyes awake.
靈猴 is a monkey of numinous spirit. 存神煉氣, "preserving the spirit, refining the breath," is Daoist inner practice — and it is what Wukong does instead of sleeping, the way an athlete rests without ever quite switching off. 朦朧著醒眼: here 著 is zhe, an ongoing state — eyes awake inside the drowsing. Set it beside Guangzhi's 睡著了 (zháo) two passages back. The plan rests on his being asleep, and he is not.
Suddenly he heard, outside, a ceaseless walking of men, and a rustling of firewood, and a wind rising with it.
聽得 takes a neutral de. 查查 is a sound-word, chosen for its noise rather than its meaning — the dry scrape of brushwood being dragged over ground. The three sounds arrive in order: feet, firewood, wind. Only the third is not made by men, and it is the one that will kill the monastery.
His mind misgave him. "At this hour the night is still. How should there be the sound of men's feet walking? Can it be robbers, plotting to do us harm?"
行得腳步之聲 takes the potential dé. His first thought is 賊盜, thieves — he assumes somebody means to steal from them, and it does not occur to him that the theft has already happened, in daylight, with his own encouragement.
With a roll he sprang up, and would have opened the door to look out — but feared to wake his master.
一骨魯 (also written 一骨碌) is a vernacular adverb: to get up all at once, with a roll of the body. And the care in the second half of the line is the whole of his character in this chapter — he will burn a monastery to the ground, and he will not wake his master to do it.
See how he summoned his powers, shook his body, and turned himself into a bee. Truly it was so:
搖身一變, "shook his body and changed," is the standard formula for his transformations, and every reader of the novel knows it by heart. The bee is his smallest form and one of his favourites; the 兒 of 蜜蜂兒 is the neutral diminutive, er.
Sweet of mouth and venomous of tail; slender of waist and light of body.
口甜尾毒 — "sweet of mouth, venomous of tail." The four-character opening is a character-sketch of the bee and, not by accident, of the creature turning into it: honey in the speech, a sting in the tail.
Threading flowers, crossing willows, it flies like an arrow; clinging to catkins, seeking fragrance, it falls like a star.
穿花度柳 is threading through blossom and crossing willow; 粘絮尋香 is clinging to willow-down in search of scent. 似落星 takes sì.
A small, small frame, and yet it can bear a burden; loud-humming, gossamer wings, and yet they can ride the wind.
微軀能負重 ("a tiny frame that can carry weight") against 薄翅會乘風 ("thin wings that can ride the wind"): the couplet's point is smallness that is not weakness, which is as neat a description of the Great Sage in this scene as anything the novel offers. 薄 is bó in this literary register, not the everyday báo; 重 is zhòng.
Down it goes from the rafter-edge, and bores its way out to see the matter plain.
椽棱 is the edge of a rafter; 鑽出 is to bore one's way out. The description ends on the verb that matters: 看分明, "to see it clearly" — which is the one thing nobody else in this monastery has managed all day.
Everything in this passage turns on how one character gets read. Guangzhi assured the assembly that the travellers were 睡著了 — asleep, the target reached, zháo. The narrator now shows us Wukong 朦朧著醒眼 — drowsing with his eyes awake, a state kept going, zhe. The whole plot of two hundred and thirty men rests on a distinction between two readings of a single character, and they have got it wrong. He is not sleeping. He is practising 存神煉氣, the Daoist nourishing of spirit and breath, which is what a monkey does at midnight in a Buddhist hall.
The bee description is short and perfectly aimed. 口甜尾毒 — sweet mouth, poisoned tail — describes an insect and indicts a shape-shifter, and any reader who has followed Wukong since the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit will catch it. The middle couplet insists on what smallness can do: bear weight, ride wind. And the last line gives the transformation its purpose, which is neither escape nor attack but sight — 鑽出看分明, "bore out and see it plain." In a chapter where an abbot cannot see a cassock by lamplight and two hundred monks cannot see what they are doing, the one creature who sees clearly has had to become an insect in order to manage it.