大路傍走出一個老公公 An Old Man Comes Out on the Road
正商議處，只見大路傍走出一個老公公來。你看他怎生模樣：正商议处，只见大路傍走出一个老公公来。你看他怎生模样：
逐句解 Line by line
Just as they were talking it over, they saw an old man come out onto the highroad.
正商議處: 處 is chù, turning the verb into a moment — "at the point of discussing it." 傍 reads páng, standing for 旁, a fixed borrowing in this project. 老公公 is a courteous word for an old man, roughly "grandfather."
Look at him, and see what manner of figure he was:
模 reads mú. The announcement of a description, and it stays in the prose.
Hale in body, he leaned on no staff; / his beard was ice, his temples snow, and both were wild.
冰髯雪鬢, a beard of ice and temples of snow, is the standard figure for great age, and 蓬蓬 adds that it is all unkempt. Then look at the first half of the line again: he is that old, and he walks without a stick. The poem contradicts itself in its opening breath, and it means to.
Golden flowers dazzled his eyes and his mind seemed clouded; / his bones were lean, his sinews withered, and yet he was strong and firm.
金花耀眼 — the golden specks that swim in front of an old man's eyes. 強硬 takes 強 as qiáng. Every couplet of this poem sets a sign of decay against a sign of vigour and refuses to choose between them.
Bent-backed, head lowered, he went at a slow pace; / his brows were heavy and his face was red as a child's.
背 is bèi, the noun. 龐眉赤臉如童 — heavy brows and a child's red face. That is not the physiognomy of a peasant. It is the standard painter's formula for a Daoist immortal.
Look at his countenance, such as men praise: / he was for all the world the Star of Longevity come out of his cave.
壽星 is the Star of Longevity, the star Canopus, always painted as a bald-domed ancient with an enormous forehead. The poem finishes by naming a god and pretending it is only making a comparison. In fact the old man is Li Changgeng, the Planet Venus, and the reader will be told so on a slip of paper shortly.
Seventy-four characters, and every one of them portraiture. The verse is built on one figure repeated three times over: an old man who is not decrepit. He needs no staff; his sinews are withered and also firm; his back is bent and his face is a child's. Then the fourth line stops contrasting and simply concludes — Chinese physiognomy reads that combination one way only, and the poem comes out and says it: he looks like the Star of Longevity.
He is not. He is Li Changgeng, the Planet Venus, who came down in chapter 3 to propose that the Monkey King be given a post in heaven rather than fought, and again in chapter 5 to warn him off the peach banquet. He has, in other words, been quietly managing Sun Wukong's career since before Sun Wukong had a master. He turns up here on a road on Yellow Wind Ridge at the exact moment when the pilgrims have a name and no address — and the novel refuses to tell us who he is until the verse on the paper slip in the very next passage.