Now the Pilgrim was by nature fierce and headstrong. Unable to hold himself in, he stepped up and cried aloud, "Old man, at so great an age you know nothing at all.

The narrator names the fault before the Pilgrim demonstrates it: 素性兇頑, fierce and headstrong by nature. 忍不住, unable to hold himself in, is the phrase that governs most of what he does in this stretch of the journey. 老兒 takes the small-scale suffix er, and it is not a respectful word.

We who have left the household come far to beg a lodging, and you would fright me off with such graceless talk.

諕 is written for 嚇 and reads xià throughout this text; the automatic reading gives háo, which is wrong here. 虎諕, "to bully like a tiger," is a colloquial compound. 厭鈍 is written for its sound: dull, disheartening, ill-omened talk.

If your house is truly too cramped and there is no place to sleep, we can sit out the night beneath the trees well enough. We shall not trouble you."

The offer is genuine and delivered as an insult. 好道, "well enough, I dare say," is a vernacular adverb of grudging sufficiency.

The old man caught hold of Sanzang. "Master, you say never a word, but that disciple of yours —

The old man appeals over the Pilgrim's head to his master, which is the correct social move and precisely the wrong tactical one. 你倒不言語: 倒 is dào, the "on the contrary" adverb — you, for your part, say nothing.

with a kidnapper's face and a jaw set askew, a mouth like the Thunder God's, and red eyes; a very consumptive fiend —

A four-part inventory of the Pilgrim's face, every item a stock piece of abuse. 拐子臉, the face of a kidnapper; 別頦腮, a jaw twisted out of true; 雷公嘴, the beaked mouth of the Thunder Duke, which is this novel's standing description of Sun Wukong. 頦 is given its dictionary reading hái; in modern speech you would hear ké.

how does he come to round upon a man of my years?"

衝撞, to affront. The old man's complaint is that he has been shouted at by a monkey, and he is entirely in the right.

The Pilgrim laughed. "Old fellow, you have no eye in your head.

忒也沒眼色 — 眼色 is discernment, the ability to read a face. The retort concedes the ugliness and quarrels only with the conclusion drawn from it.

Your smart, well-favored sort are what we call fair to the eye and foul to the taste.

俊刮, "trim and good-looking," is Ming slang. 中看不中吃 — fine to look at, no good to eat — is a proverb about food turned on people, and it is still what Chinese reaches for about anything handsome and useless. 中 is zhōng in both halves, in the sense "fit for." 似那 takes 似 as sì.

Small as Old Monkey is, he is tough enough: a knot of sinew wrapped in a skin."

皮裹一團筋 — a skin with a lump of sinew inside it — is the Pilgrim describing his own body with a butcher's precision. The sentence-final 哩 reads li, per the ruling of chapter 16.

The old man said, "You must have some arts, then."

手段, "arts, methods," is the word this novel keeps for magical technique. The old man has asked the one question Sun Wukong has been waiting for.

The Pilgrim said, "I would not boast; but I may pass muster."

將就看得過, "will do at a pinch." 將就 takes jiāng; 看得過 is a "can manage it" construction and takes dé. The modesty lasts exactly one sentence.

The old man said, "Where is your home? And for what cause did you shave your head and become a monk?"

因甚事 — question-word 甚, shén. 削髮為僧: 為 is wéi, "to be, to become."

The Pilgrim said, "Old Monkey's native place is the Water-Curtain Cave of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, in the country of Aolai, east of the sea, in the Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit.

The autobiography, compressed. 祖貫 is the ancestral registry, the formal term for where a man comes from; 傲來國 is the country of chapter 1. 東勝神洲 is Pūrvavideha, the eastern of the four Buddhist continents — but look closely at what this text actually prints. The standard Buddhist name puts 身, "body," in the third position. The Shidetang edition of 1592, which this site follows, puts 神, "spirit," instead, and 勝 here means "superior, excellent" rather than "victory." The English follows what is on the page.

From my youth I learned to play the fiend, and my name was Wukong, Awakened to Emptiness. On the strength of my own arts I made myself Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.

自小兒 takes the suffix er. 學做妖怪, "learned to do the fiend," is a startling thing to admit and he tosses it off; 稱名悟空 takes 稱 as chēng. He offers the title 齊天大聖 as something he awarded himself, which is exactly what happened.

Only because I would not take the roll of Heaven, I raised a great revolt in the Palace of Heaven and drew a whole calamity upon myself.

天錄, the celestial register — the roll of appointments that would have fixed his rank. 災愆 puts calamity and fault in one word, and the compound lays the blame where the Pilgrim, at this stage of the journey, is content to have it lie.

Now, delivered from that ordeal and my ill fortune dissolved, I have turned to the gate of the śramaṇa and go forward to seek the right fruit.

脫難 takes 難 as nàn, "calamity," not nán, "difficult." 沙門 is śramaṇa, a religious mendicant; 正果, the right fruit, is the goal named at the end of every one of these recitations.

I guard this master of mine, who serves beneath the throne of Tang, on his road to the Western Heaven to worship the Buddha. What are high hills and hard passes to me, or wide waters and raving waves?

怕甚麼 — shén again. The matched four-character pairs 山高路險 and 水闊波狂, high hills and hard passes, wide waters and raving waves, look ahead with some irony to the ridge that is now two days off.

Old Monkey can lay hold of a fiend and bring a demon low; he can quell tigers and take dragons, kick over the sky and turn the wells about. There is a little of everything he knows.

捉得怪 and 降得魔 are parallel "can do it" constructions and both take 得 as dé; 曉得, the plain verb "to know," takes toneless de. Three of the same character inside twenty-three, in two readings. 降 is xiáng, "to subdue," not jiàng, "to descend."

If in your honored house there be any flinging of bricks or clattering of tiles, pots that cry out or doors that open of themselves, Old Monkey can settle it and lay it to rest."

The boast comes downhill, brilliantly, from dragons to poltergeists. 丟磚打瓦 and 鍋叫門開 are the standard signs of a haunted farmhouse; 安鎮 is the technical verb for laying a spirit. Having offered to overturn heaven, the Great Sage offers to see to the crockery.