七載爛桃 Seven Years on Rotten-Peach Mountain
孫悟空在傍聞講，喜得他抓耳撓腮，眉花眼笑，忍不住手之舞之，足之蹈之。忽被祖師看見，叫孫悟空道：「你在班中，怎麼顛狂躍舞，不聽我講？」悟空道：「弟子誠心聽講，聽到老師父妙音處，喜不自勝，故不覺作此踴躍之狀。望師父恕罪。」祖師道：「你既識妙音，我且問你，你到洞中多少時了？」悟空道：「弟子本來懵懂，不知多少時節。只記得灶下無火，常去山後打柴，見一山好桃樹，我在那裡吃了七次飽桃矣。」祖師道：「那山喚名爛桃山。你既吃七次，想是七年了。你今要從我學些甚麼道？」悟空道：「但憑尊師教誨，只是有些道氣兒，弟子便就學了。」孙悟空在傍闻讲，喜得他抓耳挠腮，眉花眼笑，忍不住手之舞之，足之蹈之。忽被祖师看见，叫孙悟空道：「你在班中，怎么颠狂跃舞，不听我讲？」悟空道：「弟子诚心听讲，听到老师父妙音处，喜不自胜，故不觉作此踊跃之状。望师父恕罪。」祖师道：「你既识妙音，我且问你，你到洞中多少时了？」悟空道：「弟子本来懵懂，不知多少时节。只记得灶下无火，常去山后打柴，见一山好桃树，我在那里吃了七次饱桃矣。」祖师道：「那山唤名烂桃山。你既吃七次，想是七年了。你今要从我学些甚么道？」悟空道：「但凭尊师教诲，只是有些道气儿，弟子便就学了。」
逐句解 Line by line
Sun Wukong, listening to the lecture from off to one side, was so delighted that he scratched his ears and rubbed his cheeks, his brows dancing and his eyes laughing; he could not keep his hands from dancing it and his feet from stamping it.
The monkey cannot sit still, and the description is worth slowing down over. 抓耳撓腮, scratching the ears and rubbing the cheeks, is the living idiom — still what Chinese reaches for to describe anyone fidgeting with excitement or frustration — and here it is being applied to an actual ape. Then the narrator reaches for a classical tag. 手之舞之，足之蹈之 comes from the 〈詩大序〉, the Great Preface to the 《詩經》, describing the point where feeling outruns words and song and breaks out as movement: the hands dance it, the feet stamp it. A fidgeting monkey gets the vocabulary of the highest poetics. Textual point: the 世德堂本 opens this beat with 孫悟空在傍聞講, Wukong listening from the side, where the common modern 通行本 reads 此時說到玄妙處, "just as the lecture reached the subtle mysteries." 傍 is páng, a variant of 旁, beside — not bàng, to draw near. And 喜得 takes 得 as the toneless de marking degree, "so glad that…", against the full-tone dé, to obtain, in the chapter's opening line.
Suddenly the Patriarch caught sight of him and called out to Sun Wukong: "You there in the ranks — why are you capering about like a madman instead of listening to my lecture?"
班中 is "in the ranks," the disciples seated in rows, and 顛狂 (diān kuáng) is wild, off one's head. The master has caught him dancing at the back of the class. (不聽 keeps 不 as bù before the level tone of 聽.)
Wukong said: "Your disciple was listening with all his heart; but when I came to the place of the old master's wondrous words, I could not contain my joy, and so without realizing it I fell to capering like this. I beg the master to forgive my fault."
A defence that doubles as a compliment: he was listening so hard he could not contain himself. 妙音處 is the point of the master's wondrous sound, with 處 the noun chù, place, not the verb chǔ. 喜不自勝 is "unable to master one's own joy" — 勝 here carries the sense of being equal to bearing something; modern standard reads it shèng, though the classical reading for this sense was shēng. 弟子 is dì zǐ with 子 in full tone, the classical compound for a disciple rather than the neutral colloquial suffix, and it keeps that reading every time Wukong refers to himself. (喜不自勝 takes 不 as bú before the falling tone of 自; 故不覺 takes bù before the rising tone of 覺.)
The Patriarch said: "Since you can recognize the wondrous sound, let me put a question to you: how long is it now since you came to this cave?"
The master lets it pass and changes tack. 識 is shí, to know or recognise, not zhì, to record — that sense belongs to 誌. 多少 is duō shǎo, with 少 in third tone, not shào, young. And the 了 closing the question is the toneless le, against the liǎo, to comprehend, of 了性 in the lecture verse.
Wukong said: "Your disciple is a muddle-head by nature and does not know how much time has passed. I only remember that whenever the fire beneath the stove went out I would go behind the mountain to gather firewood, and there I found a hillside of fine peach trees, where I have eaten my fill of peaches seven times now."
Here is the joke everybody remembers. Asked how long he has been there, he has no idea — 懵懂 (měng dǒng), muddle-headed, in the dark — so he counts by meals instead. 灶下無火, "no fire beneath the stove," means the cooking fire had died and fuel was wanted; 灶 (zào) is the form the 世德堂本 uses, where the orthodox traditional character is 竈. 矣 (yǐ) is the classical full stop, marking something finished. (不知 takes bù before the level tone of 知; 一山 is yì shān, "a whole hillside of." 七次 keeps its citation tone — this edition marks the running tone shifts only on 一 and 不.)
The Patriarch said: "That hill is called Rotten Peach Mountain. Since you have eaten there seven times, it must be seven years. What sort of Way do you now wish to learn from me?"
爛桃山, Rotten Peach Mountain, is named for its windfall of overripe fruit — and seven feasts convert neatly into seven years. 想是 is "must be, I take it," with 想 in the sense of reckoning. 甚麼 (shèn me) is the older way of writing 什麼.
Wukong said: "I leave it entirely to my honored master's teaching; so long as it carries some savor of the Way, your disciple will study it."
但憑 is "entirely as you direct" (憑 píng, to rely on). 教誨 takes 教 as jiào in its noun sense, instruction — the third reading of that one character in as many passages, after jiāo, to teach, and the jiào of 三乘教. The charm is all in 道氣兒 (dào qì er), "a whiff of the Way," where the 兒 suffix puts a shrug into the whole reply. He sounds perfectly biddable. He is about to prove he is nothing of the kind. 便 is biàn, not pián as in 便宜.
The passage runs on a collision between the solemnity of the lecture and the animal body of the listener. Wukong cannot keep still: he scratches his ears and rubs his cheeks — 抓耳撓腮, the idiom Chinese still reaches for when somebody is beside themselves — his brows dance, his hands and feet go off on their own. Then the narrator dignifies the fidget with a quotation: 手之舞之，足之蹈之, "the hands dance it, the feet stamp it," from the Great Preface to the 《詩經》, where it describes the moment feeling overflows speech and song and turns into motion. The allusion cuts both ways. It credits the monkey with a real and overwhelming response to truth, and in the same stroke it exposes exactly the restlessness that makes him the 心猿 — the mind that cultivation has not yet taught to sit down.
Dating an apprenticeship by peach harvests is one of the novel's best-loved strokes. He has no calendar and no sense of duration whatever; he measures time by his own appetite, and seven fillings of peaches come out as seven years. It is pure character — the greed, the sublime unconcern — but it also plants a seed. Peaches are the fruit of immortality in this cosmos, and 爛桃山, Rotten Peach Mountain, with its windfall of overripe fruit, is a homely earthbound rehearsal for the celestial 蟠桃, the immortal peaches Wukong will raid in Heaven a few chapters from now. The seeker who cannot count his own years is about to demand the one thing that would put him beyond counting altogether.
The exchange ends on the question the whole chapter turns on: 你今要從我學些甚麼道, what Way do you wish to learn? Wukong's answer sounds like perfect docility — anything with 道氣兒, a whiff of the Way about it, will do. The next scene demolishes that modesty. When the master names the established gateways one at a time, the monkey refuses all of them, because each fails the single test he has brought with him and never mentioned: does it yield 長生, deathless life? The inner-alchemy commentators approve, reading it as the adept declining the 旁門, the side-doors, in favour of the one true road to the golden elixir. Read as character it is simpler than that — the same fixed hunger that pushed a stone monkey across two oceans to find a teacher in the first place.