The story tells how the Tang Monk and his three disciples, having come through their ordeal, pressed on ahead; in less than a day they had passed Yellow Wind Ridge, and going westward came upon a stretch of level, open plain.

The chapter opens the way a storyteller opens. 話說, 'now the story tells,' is the cue that picks the thread back up after the last chapter's ordeal — and that ordeal is what 脫難 ('escaped the calamity') points at, the Yellow Wind demon just put down. 難 is nàn here, a disaster, not nán, 'difficult.' Then the land flattens out: 一脈平陽之地, 'a vein of level, sunlit ground.' In this book that is never just scenery. Open country after a trial is the pilgrimage breathing out before it holds its breath again.

Time sped swiftly on; summer passed and autumn came, and they saw cold cicadas shrilling among the withered willows while the Great Fire star slid toward the west.

Summer goes and autumn comes, and the narrator marks it by the sky rather than the calendar. 大火向西流, 'the Great Fire runs west,' picks up a line from Shījīng, the old Book of Songs — 七月流火 — where the 'Great Fire' is the red star Antares, 心宿 in Chinese reckoning. Its slide toward the horizon is a date, not a blaze: when it sinks, the heat is breaking. Beneath it, 寒蟬鳴敗柳, 'cold cicadas crying in ruined willows,' sets the key the whole opening is played in.

Just as they were going along, there appeared a great sweep of raging water, its muddy billows heaving and surging.

Mid-stride — 正行處, 'right where they were walking' (行 is xíng) — the ground runs out. 只見, 'and suddenly they saw,' is the narrator's trapdoor, the phrase that drops an obstacle in front of the pilgrims without warning. What drops here is water: 狂瀾, 'mad waves,' and 渾波湧浪, 'turbid billows welling up.' Rivers are among the hardest things this journey puts in the road, and this one will prove the strangest of them.

Sanzang, upon his horse, cried out in haste: 'Disciples, see how broad the water is up ahead, and yet not a boat is to be seen plying it — however are we to cross over?'

Sanzang panics first, as he generally does, and the line happens to hand us a neat lesson in one character. 那 turns up twice and is read two different ways. 那前邊, 'that stretch up ahead,' is nà, pointing. 從那裡過去, 'cross from where?', is nǎ, asking — the interrogative later given its own character, 哪, but written like this as a matter of course in Ming vernacular. 三藏 (Sānzàng, with 藏 as zàng) is not a name but a title: 'Three Baskets,' the whole Buddhist canon, awarded to Xuanzang for having mastered it. His helpless question sets the scene's standing triangle — master appalled, Bajie flat, monkey boastful.

Bajie looked and said: 'It is a raging flood indeed, and there is no boat to ferry us across.'

Bajie's contribution is to state the obvious, which is his function in these scenes: 無舟可渡, 'no boat, no crossing.' His name 八戒 (Bājiè) means 'Eight Rules,' after the eight precepts he is supposed to be keeping and mostly is not. He is the flat middle term between the master's alarm and the boast that comes next.

The Pilgrim sprang up into the air, raised a hand to shade his eyes like an awning and looked; and he too took fright, saying:

搭涼篷, 'to rig an awning,' is the set phrase for putting a flat hand above the eyes to squint into the distance; every reader of these books can see the gesture. The weight of the line is in four characters at the end: 他也心驚 — he too was shaken. When the airborne 行者 (Xíngzhě, 'the Pilgrim') is rattled, the barrier is real.

'Master, it is hard indeed, hard indeed! As for this river, if it were a question of old Sun's own crossing, I need only give my waist a twist and I'd be over;

He says it twice, 真個是難 and again 真個是難, 'truly hard' — and here 難 is nán, 'difficult,' not the nàn 'calamity' of 脫難 a few lines back. Then the swagger arrives anyway. 老孫, 'old Sun,' is how Wukong refers to himself when he is pleased with himself, and 扭一扭, 'a twist of the waist,' is all the river amounts to. For him.

but for the Master, it is truly a thousandfold hard to ford, ten thousand years hard to traverse.'

And then the catch, in a balanced pair. 千分, 'a thousand parts' (分 is fēn), set against 萬載, 'ten thousand years' — 載 read zǎi, the reading that means a year, not zài, 'to carry.' What costs the monkey a twist costs the master a thousandfold. Buried in the boast is the problem the whole chapter exists to solve: a body has to be carried across, and there is no shortcut for carrying it.

Sanzang said: 'From here I gaze out and see no bound — just how wide is it, in truth?'

一望無邊, 'one look, no edge' — the river as seen by a man on a horse. 端的 means 'exactly, in fact'; in this Ming-vernacular pairing 的 is read dì, not the everyday toneless de.

The Pilgrim said: 'Reckoning by the crossing, it is some eight hundred lǐ across.'

Eight hundred 里 — lǐ, the Chinese mile, something like half a kilometre. It stays in Chinese because it is a Chinese measure and not a mile. The number is the boast converted into arithmetic, which is precisely what invites Bajie to ask how he could possibly know it.

Bajie said: 'Elder brother, how can you fix the figure of its breadth so exactly?'

怎的 — 'however could you?' Bajie asks the question the reader is already asking. 定得個 … 之數 is 'to pin a number on it,' with 得 as de, the small syllable that turns a verb into 'able to.' His doubt is the cue for the monkey to explain his eyes.

The Pilgrim said: 'I'll not deceive you, worthy brother — with this pair of eyes old Sun can, in broad daylight, make out fortune and disaster a thousand lǐ down the road.'

Here are the famous eyes. 火眼金睛, 'fiery eyes, golden pupils,' were baked into him during his stretch in Laozi's crucible, and they are one of the running props of the novel. 看得千里, 'can see a thousand lǐ' (得 again de) — but look at what he claims to see at that range: 吉凶, 'fortune and disaster.' Not merely far. Through.

'Just now, looking down from the air, I could not tell how far the river runs upstream and down; but I could see that at this crossing it is a full eight hundred lǐ.'

He also concedes a limit, which is rarer. 卻才 ('just now') from the air he could not tell 不知多遠, 'how far it runs' upstream and down — only that the crossing in front of them is 足有八百里, 'a full eight hundred.' Even the golden pupils have an edge to them.

The elder, sighing in his vexation, reined his horse around, and of a sudden saw upon the bank a stone tablet.

The monk turns his horse away in vexation and finds the answer he did not ask for. 長老, 'the Elder' (長 is zhǎng), is the respectful name for him. The stone is counted with 通, the measure word kept for steles and documents — one of those small grammatical signals that tells a Chinese reader at once what kind of object has just come into view.

When the three came together to look, they saw three seal-script characters upon it, reading 'The River of Flowing Sands'; and on its face were four small lines of regular script, which ran:

Two hands on one stone. The name 流沙河 is cut in 篆字, seal script: the old, formal, monumental letters, the ones you carve to be read in a thousand years. The verse below is in 真字, 'true characters,' the plain clerkly hand you would actually write in. 腹上, 'on the belly,' is the stone's broad face. And 四行真字 gives this chapter its single instance of 行 read háng, 'a line, a row' — the other fifty-eight are all xíng, 'to go.'

Eight hundred lǐ — the realm of Flowing Sands; three thousand lǐ — the Weak Water's deep.

The stele states the scale in ten characters, and both halves count in the same measure. 弱水, 'Weak Water,' is a river out of the old Classic of Mountains and Seas: water with the buoyancy taken out, on which nothing whatever will float. Not a figure of speech for a difficult river — a river that does not hold things up. The next couplet shows you what that means in practice.

A goose-down feather will not drift atop it; a reed-flower, cast, sinks straight to the bed.

鵝毛飄不起: a goose feather will not drift on it. 蘆花定底沉: reed-down goes straight to the bed. This is the standard emblem of 弱水, and it is a closed argument. If the two lightest things anybody could name sink, no hull will float either. The stele has ruled out the boat before anyone thinks to look for one — which means this crossing will have to be won some other way.