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.
Textual point: the 世德堂本 opens this beat with 孫悟空在傍聞講 ("Wukong, listening from the side"); the common modern 通行本 reads 此時說到玄妙處 ("just as the lecture reached the subtle mysteries"). 多音字: 傍 = páng here, a variant of 旁 "beside, nearby," not bàng "to draw near." 喜得: 得 is the structural particle de marking the degree complement ("so glad that…"), distinct from full-tone dé "to obtain" in 其一 (得了姓名). 手之舞之，足之蹈之 is a set phrase from the 〈詩大序〉 (Great Preface to the 詩經): when feeling outruns words and song, "the hands dance it and the feet stamp it."
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: "in the ranks" — the disciples seated in rows; 中 = zhōng "within." 顛狂 (diānkuáng) = wild, deranged. Sandhi: 不聽 = bù tīng (不 before the 1st-tone 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.”
妙音處: "at the point of [his] wondrous sound"; 處 = chù, the noun "place/point" (as in 其一 寢處), not verb chǔ. 多音字: 勝 here is the "be equal to bearing, withstand" sense of 不勝 (喜不自勝 "unable to contain one's joy"); modern standard reads shèng, though the classical reading for this sense was shēng. Sandhi: 喜不自勝 → 不 = bú (before 4th-tone 自); 故不覺 → 不 = bù (before 2nd-tone 覺). 弟子 = dì zǐ — read with toned 子 (zǐ), the classical relational compound "disciple," not the neutral colloquial suffix zi; this recurs throughout as Wukong's self-reference.
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?”
多音字: 識 = shí "to know, recognize" here, not zhì "to record" (= 誌); 多少 = duō shǎo, with 少 = shǎo (3rd tone), not shào "young." 時了: 了 = le, the sentence-final particle (here closing a span of time) — contrast liǎo "to comprehend" in 其二 (了性).
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.”
懵懂 (měng dǒng): muddle-headed, in the dark. 灶下無火: "no fire beneath the stove" — when the cooking-fire had died and fuel was wanted; 灶 = zào "stove, hearth," the form the 世德堂本 uses (the orthodox traditional graph is 竈, kept by some editions). 記得: 得 again the neutral particle de. Sandhi: 不知 = bù zhī (before 1st-tone 知); 一山 = yì shān (一 before 1st-tone 山, "a whole hillside of"). 七次 keeps its citation tone (qī cì): this project marks only 一/不 sandhi. 矣 (yǐ): classical sentence-final particle (= 了/已), marking completion.
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 (Làn Táo Shān): "Rotten Peach Mountain," named for its overripe, fallen fruit; the comic detail that fixes Wukong's seven years by counting his seven gluttonous peach-feasts. 想是: "must be, presumably" (想 here = "to reckon"). 甚麼 (shèn me): "what" (= 什麼); 甚 = shèn.
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: "simply rely on / entirely as you direct" (憑 píng "to rely on"). 教誨 (jiào huì): "instruction" — here 教 = jiào (4th tone), the noun sense, a third contextual reading after jiāo "to teach" (其一) and jiào in 三乘教 (其二). 道氣兒 (dào qì er): "a whiff/savor of the Way"; 兒 is the colloquial 兒化 suffix (neutral, like the suffix 子), giving the monkey's reply a light, offhand tone. 便就 (biàn jiù): "then, right away"; 便 = biàn (4th tone), not pián (便宜).
The passage is built on a comic collision between the solemnity of the lecture and the irrepressible animal body of the listener. Wukong cannot sit still: he scratches his ears and rubs his cheeks, his brows dance, and his hands and feet move of their own accord. The narrator dignifies the fidget with a classical tag — 手之舞之，足之蹈之, "the hands dance it, the feet stamp it" — lifted from the Great Preface to the 詩經, where it names the moment when feeling overflows speech and song and breaks into bodily motion. The allusion cuts two ways: it credits the monkey with a genuine, overpowering response to truth, and at the same time it exposes exactly the restlessness that makes him the 心猿, the mind that cultivation has not yet learned to still.
The dating of Wukong's apprenticeship by peach-harvests is one of the novel's most quoted comic strokes. He has no calendar, no sense of duration at all; he reckons time only by his own appetite, and seven fillings of peaches become seven years. The detail is pure characterization — the childlike greed, the sublime unconcern — but it also plants a quiet motif. Peaches are the fruit of immortality in this cosmos, and the 爛桃山, "Rotten Peach Mountain," with its windfall of overripe fruit, is a homely, earthbound foreshadowing of the celestial 蟠桃, the immortal peaches Wukong will plunder in heaven a few chapters on. The seeker who cannot count his years is, fittingly, about to demand the one thing that would put him beyond counting altogether.
The exchange turns, at its very end, on the question that drives the whole chapter: 你今要從我學些甚麼道, "what Way do you wish to learn?" Wukong's reply sounds like perfect humility — anything with 道氣兒, a mere savor of the Way, will do. But the scene that follows immediately undercuts that modesty: when the Patriarch names the established gateways one by one, the monkey rejects every one of them, because each fails the single test he has secretly brought with him — whether it yields 長生, deathless life. The internal-alchemy commentators read this insistence approvingly, as the adept's refusal of the 旁門, the "side-doors," in favor of the one authentic path to the golden elixir; read as character, it is simply the same fixed hunger that first drove a stone monkey across two oceans to find a teacher.