Master and disciple travelled some five or seven days of wild road, when one day, as the sky was drawing toward dusk, they saw far off a hamlet of a few households.

五七日 is idiomatic vagueness — five days or seven, not five times seven. English does the same thing with a week or two. 將 is again the adverbial jiāng, about to. And 一 shifts tone twice in one line by the ordinary rule: yí before the falling tone of 日, yì before the level tone of 村.

Sanzang said, "Wukong, look — there is a mountain farmstead close by on that side. Let us go and beg a night's lodging, and take the road again tomorrow. What do you say?"

壁廂, literally wall-quarter, is a Yuan and Ming colloquialism for over on that side. 相 is xiāng, the mutual adverb — near to one another. 告宿, to beg a night's lodging, is the travelling monk's standard petition. 一宵 takes yì before the level tone of 宵.

The Pilgrim said, "Wait till old Sun has gone to look whether it be lucky or ill, and we will settle the matter then."

區處 is a compound verb, to settle or dispose of a matter, so 處 is chǔ and not the noun reading chù, a place; the default gets this one wrong. Note the division of labour, too: the master proposes to ask for hospitality, the disciple proposes to go and scout. That is the whole book in one exchange.

The Master reined in the silken bridle; the Pilgrim fixed his gaze and looked. It was in truth like this:

那師父 and 這行者 — that master, this pilgrim — are the storyteller pointing at two figures on an imagined stage, one over there and one right here. 定睛觀看, to fix the eyes and look, is the formula that always comes immediately before a set-piece.

Bamboo hedges dense on dense; thatched roofs tier on tier.

The description is a 賦, a rhapsody — a descriptive set-piece built out of matched pairs of lines rather than regular verse — and it runs to six units. The first two are four-character pairs balanced against each other. 重重 is chóng chóng, layer upon layer, not zhòng, heavy.

Wild trees, sky-piercing, greet the gate; a winding stream and its bridge cast their shadow across the door.

參天 is reaching up to the sky. 曲 is qū, winding — not qǔ, a tune, which is where the default reading goes. 映戶: the bridge is mirrored at the doorway, or throws its reflection across it.

By the road the willows are green, and green upon green; within the garden the flowers are open, and fragrance upon fragrance.

傍 here is standing in for 旁, beside, and so takes that character's reading, páng, not the verbal bàng, to lean on. The doubled endings 依依 and 馥馥 answer each other across the break in the line: green upon green, fragrance upon fragrance.

At this hour the last light is sinking westward, and everywhere in the hill-woods the birds are clamouring;

The original joins this unit and the next with a semicolon; we set them as two lines. 夕照 is the evening light itself rather than the sun that casts it — what sinks westward here is the glow.

the evening smoke climbs from the cooking-fires, and along every lane the cattle and sheep are turning home.

爨, cuàn, is the cooking hearth, so 晚煙出爨 is the smoke of the supper fires going up. 條條道徑 doubles its measure word to mean lane after lane — the same trick as the line before.

See too the fowls and swine, fed full, drowsing at the corner of the house, and the tipsy old neighbour coming along in song.

雞豚, fowl and pig, is the standard shorthand for a farmer's modest plenty, and it reaches back to 孟子. The rhapsody then closes on 醉酣鄰叟唱歌來, the tipsy old neighbour coming home singing — the last untroubled image in the chapter before a pig is named.