Seeing him thus turn from evil and return to the right, old Gao was the more delighted, and bade the house-boys lay a banquet to thank the Tang Monk.

去邪歸正, turning from the crooked and coming back to the straight, answers Wukong's 改邪歸正 a moment ago — the same idiom with one character swapped. 家僮 are the boys of the household. Old Gao's gratitude, like everything else in his house, is expressed as an outlay.

Bajie came forward and caught hold of old Gao. "Sir, let my humble thorn come out and pay her respects to her husband's father and her uncles. What do you say?"

拙荊 is "my clumsy thorn," the self-deprecating word a man uses for his own wife, and it comes from the thorn-twig hairpins a poor woman wore. English once had "my old woman" in the same register. Bajie has been a monk for perhaps ten minutes and wishes to introduce his wife to the family. On the terms he uses for the monks: 公公 is a woman's husband's father and 伯伯 his elder brothers, so he is asking her to greet them as kin — the exact relation he has just given up.

The Pilgrim laughed. "Worthy brother, you have entered the Gate of the Śramaṇa and become a monk. From today, never raise that talk of a 'humble thorn' again.

沙門 transcribes the Sanskrit śramaṇa, one who has left home to strive. Note where the rebuke lands: not on the woman, on the word. Wukong forbids the phrase 拙荊, which is to say he forbids Bajie a husband's grammar.

In this world there are hearth-dwelling Daoists; where is there a hearth-dwelling monk?

火居道士 is a hearth-dwelling Daoist — a married priest with a household and a family, and a perfectly recognised order. 那裡 is the question-word nǎ. The distinction is doctrinally exact, and coming from Wukong it is also unanswerable.

Let us rather take our places, eat a meal of vegetarian fare, and be off early on the road to the Western Heaven."

敘了坐次, to settle the order of seating: the first business of any Chinese banquet then and now, and the source of more anxiety than the food. 趕早兒 takes the suffix 兒 as er.

Old Gao set out the tables and invited Sanzang to the seat of honour; the Pilgrim and Bajie sat at his left and right, and the kinsfolk below them.

兩傍 writes 兩旁, so 傍 is páng, at the sides. The seating plan is the sentence's whole content: the monk above, the two disciples flanking him, the family below. Bajie has been promoted out of his own in-laws in a single afternoon, and is sitting above the men who used to pay him.

Old Gao broached the vegetarian wine, filled a cup brimful, poured a libation to heaven and earth, and then offered it to Sanzang.

素酒 is "pure wine" — unfortified, or by other accounts simply wine drunk without meat; the sources do not agree, and the ambiguity is exactly what makes the next exchange possible. 奠 is to pour a libation. Old Gao performs the full ritual sequence before anybody swallows anything.

Sanzang said: "I will not deceive the Squire. Your poor monk was a vegetarian in the womb, and has never eaten flesh from childhood."

胎裡素, "a vegetarian in the womb," is a wonderful piece of vernacular and needs no unpacking in any language. 自幼兒 takes 兒 as the suffix er.

Old Gao said: "Knowing the master's purity, I have ventured no flesh. This wine too is of the pure sort; one cup can do no harm."

清素, pure and plain. Watch the squire's hospitality work through its options: refused meat, he offers wine; refused wine, he will offer money; refused money, cloth. He has no other way of expressing anything.

Sanzang said: "Nor dare I take wine. Wine is the first of the prohibitions of our monkish house."

第一戒, the first precept. In the standard five, the ban on alcohol comes fifth, not first — Sanzang is ranking it by weight rather than by number, which tells you what he thinks of drink. The ordinal here shifts tone in the ordinary way: 第一 is read dì yí.

Wuneng was thrown into a flurry. "Master, I have kept the fast on my own account, but I never gave up wine."

The comedy is in the speed. 慌了 — he is thrown into a flap, having been named for eight prohibitions about four minutes ago and now hearing about a ninth.

Wukong said: "Old Sun's capacity is small — I cannot drink a jarful — but neither did I give up wine."

量窄 is a small capacity for drink, with 量 read liàng; 罈把 is "a jar or so." Wukong is not abstaining either, and manages to say so in the form of a boast dressed as modesty. He cannot manage a whole jar.

Sanzang said: "Then so be it. You brothers may take a little of the pure wine, only you shall not drink to drunkenness and spoil our business."

Sanzang gives way. It is the first concession of many, and the phrase he gives way with — 也罷, "well then, so be it" — becomes the characteristic sound of his authority for the rest of the journey.

And so the two of them took the first round. All the rest sat down in their old places, and the vegetarian dishes were laid.

頭鍾, the first cup of the round. The two disciples drink. The master does not.

There is no telling the abundance of that board, nor the richness of its dishes.

說不盡: since 盡 keeps its full jìn, the 不 before it takes the rising tone, bú. The phrase itself — "there is no telling" — is the storyteller's way of declining to describe a banquet he has already described a hundred times, and getting credit for the splendour anyway.