Sanzang said: "Enough idle talk. Let us be off early."

少題閑話, "raise less idle talk" — Sanzang's way of ending an argument he cannot win. 趕早兒 again, 兒 as er.

So they made up a load of baggage, and Bajie shouldered it;

一擔行李: the classifier 擔 is dàn, a carrying-pole load — and because the pinyin sandhi is computed on the base tone, 一 must be corrected by hand to yí. 八戒擔著: the verb, dān. Two readings of one graph, four characters apart.

the white horse was saddled and Sanzang rode; the Pilgrim carried his iron rod on his shoulder and led the way in front.

The marching order established in this line will not change for eighty chapters: the Idiot under the load, the monk on the horse, the Pilgrim in front with the rod. 肩擔 is again the verb, dān.

The three of them together took leave of old Gao and all the kinsfolk, and set off westward.

一行三眾 — "the party, three persons." The Tang monk left Chang'an alone; he leaves the Gao Farm with two disciples and a horse.

There is a poem in evidence. The poem says:

有詩為證, 為 as wéi; then 詩曰：. Since the lead-in is preceded by prose, it stays inside the prose segment.

The ground is full of mist and rose, the trees stand tall in colour; the Buddha's son of the house of Tang toils bitterly on.

唐朝佛子, the Buddha-son of the Tang — 子 is lexical, zǐ. 苦勞勞, toiling and toiling bitterly: the reduplication carries the whole weight of the pilgrimage.

Hungry, he eats from one bowl the rice of a thousand houses; cold, he wears one patched robe stitched with a thousand needles.

千家飯, the rice of a thousand households, gathered in one begging-bowl; 一衲袍, one patched robe of a thousand stitches. 寒著千針: 著 is the lexical verb zhuó, "to wear."

Let the will-horse not run loose in the breast; let the mind-monkey, wayward and unruly, not be set howling.

意馬 and 心猿, the will-horse and the mind-monkey, named in the same couplet — and the party now consists of a horse, a monkey, and a monk. 莫教嚎 takes 教 as causative jiào.

When nature and feeling are settled and all conditions accord, the moon is full, the flower golden, and the coarse hair shed.

貞元 and 伐毛 are alchemical: 伐毛洗髓, "to cut away the coarse hair and wash the marrow," the sloughing of the mortal body. 月滿金華, the full moon and the golden flower, mark the completion of the elixir.