The Pilgrim quickly leapt up on a cloud, made straight for a household to the due north, begged a bowl of vegetarian fare, and brought it back to offer the master.

化了一缽素齋, 'begged an alms-bowl of vegetarian food.' The errand takes him no time at all, and the speed of it is what starts the argument.

The master, seeing how quickly he had come and gone, called out: 'Wukong, this household where you begged the food —'

來得甚快, 'came back extremely fast' (得 de, 甚 shèn, 'exceedingly'). The master draws the natural inference — if he was back that quickly, the house must be close — and the whole comic argument of this passage grows out of that one wrong assumption.

'wouldn't it be better to go and ask them for a way across the river than to keep grappling with this monster?'

不強似, 'would it not be better than' (似 is sì). Sanzang's suggestion is entirely sensible on its own terms: never mind fighting the monster, go and ask the neighbours how people cross.

The Pilgrim said with a laugh: 'That house is a fearful distance off — five or seven thousand lǐ away —

遠得狠, 'fearfully far' (得 de), and 相去有五七千里, 'five or seven thousand lǐ apart' (相 xiāng, mutually). The neighbours are roughly the width of a continent away.

'how would they know anything of the water? What use would it be to ask them?'

他那裡得知水性, 'however would they come to know the water?' — with 那 as nǎ, the question word, and 得 as dé, to come by. Two objections in one line: they are too far away, and they would not know anything useful anyway.

Bajie said: 'Elder brother's spinning yarns again — five or seven thousand lǐ, and how did you come and go so fast?'

扯謊, 'spinning yarns' — Bajie says out loud what any reader is thinking (去來得快, 'came and went so fast,' 得 de). His scepticism is the cue the monkey has been waiting for.

The Pilgrim said: 'What would you know of it? Old Sun's somersault cloud carries a hundred and eight thousand lǐ at a single bound.'

觔斗雲, the somersault cloud (斗 is dǒu, as in 筋斗, a tumble), covers 十萬八千里 — a hundred and eight thousand lǐ — in one bound. Readers of the novel will recognise the figure, which is the one it gives for the whole span of the journey west. In a single somersault he can cover the entire pilgrimage. Remember that for what comes next.

'A mere five or seven thousand lǐ — I need only nod my head a couple of times and bend my waist once, and there and back it is. What difficulty in that?'

點上兩點 … 躬上一躬: a couple of nods and one bow of the waist. He has reduced a journey of thousands of lǐ to a shrug — and handed Bajie the obvious question.

Bajie said: 'Brother! If it's as easy as all that, then take the master on your back, give a nod or two,

你把師父背著, 'take the master on your back' (著 zhe). Here it is: the question every first-time reader of this novel asks almost immediately, and the book has waited a long while to let somebody say it out loud.

'bend your waist, and just leap across — why go to all this bitter trouble of fighting the monster?'

跳過去罷了, 'just hop over and be done with it,' and 何必苦苦 … 廝戰, 'why go to all this bitter trouble of fighting?' Bajie is not being stupid. He is being completely reasonable, which is why the answer has to be a good one.

The Pilgrim said: 'Can't you ride a cloud yourself? Why don't you carry the master over?'

The monkey's first move is to pass the question back: 你把師父馱過去不是, 'why don't you carry him over yourself?' It buys him a moment, and it gets Bajie to state the physical half of the problem before he states the spiritual half.

Bajie said: 'The master's mortal frame of flesh and bone is heavy as Mount Tai; this cloud-riding of mine —'

凡胎肉骨, 'a common womb-born frame of flesh and bone,' and 重似泰山, 'heavy as Mount Tai' (重 is zhòng; 似 is sì). Mount Tai is the standard measure of weight and consequence in Chinese, the mountain you invoke when you want the heaviest thing there is. Bajie states the fact correctly and understands it not at all.

'how could it bear the weight? It must be your somersault cloud that could do it.'

怎稱得起, 'how could it take the load?' (稱 chēng, to bear weight; 得 de) — and 須是你的觔斗方可, 'only your somersault would do it' (斗 dǒu). The task goes back to the monkey, and with it the need for a real answer.