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.

素性兇頑 — the narrator names the fault before the Pilgrim exhibits it. 忍不住, unable to contain himself, is the phrase that governs most of his conduct in the first thirty chapters. 老兒 takes the diminutive suffix er, and is not respectful.

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

諕 (U+8AD5) writes 嚇 and reads xià throughout this text; pypinyin defaults to háo. 虎諕, "to bully like a tiger," is a colloquial compound. 厭鈍 is written for sound: dull, disheartening, ill-omened speech.

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 concession is real but is delivered as a taunt. 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's appeal goes over the Pilgrim's head to the master, which is the correct social move and exactly the wrong tactical one. 你倒不言語: 倒 is dào, the adverb of contrariety — "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 catalogue of the Pilgrim's face, each item a fixed vernacular 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 the novel's standing description of Sun Wukong. 頦 is given here in its dictionary reading hái; modern colloquial usage would read 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 capacity to read a face. The retort concedes the ugliness and disputes only the inference.

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

俊刮, "trim and handsome," is Ming slang. 中看不中吃, fair to look at and not fit to eat, is a proverb of food applied to men; 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 in it — is the Pilgrim's own body described with a butcher's accuracy. The sentence-final 哩 is read lī, per the ruling of ch. 16.

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

手段, "arts, methods," is the word the novel reserves for magical technique. The old man asks the one question the Pilgrim has been waiting for.

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

將就看得過, "will pass at a pinch." 將就 takes jiāng; 看得過 is a potential complement 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 — interrogative 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 Body.

The autobiography compressed. 祖貫 is the ancestral registry, the formal term for one's native place; 東勝神洲 is Pūrvavideha, the eastern of the four continents, and 傲來國 the country of chapter one.

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 admission, casually made; 稱名悟空 takes 稱 as chēng. He gives the title 齊天大聖 as something he conferred on himself, which is precisely true.

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, calamity and fault together: the compound assigns the blame where the Pilgrim, at this stage of the journey, is willing 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. 沙門 is śramaṇa; 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 four-graph pairs 山高路險 and 水闊波狂 anticipate, with some irony, the ridge in the next paragraph but one.

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 attainment constructions and both take 得 as dé; 曉得, the lexical verb, takes de. Three occurrences of the graph in twenty-three, in two different 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 descends, 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.