撞天婚頌 The Blind Lottery
那婦人道：「不好，不好。我這裡有一方手帕，你頂在頭上，遮了臉，撞個天婚：教我女兒從你跟前走過，你伸開手扯到那個，就把那個配了你罷。獃子依言，接了手帕，頂在頭上。有詩為證。詩曰：那妇人道：「不好，不好。我这里有一方手帕，你顶在头上，遮了脸，撞个天婚：教我女儿从你跟前走过，你伸开手扯到那个，就把那个配了你罢。呆子依言，接了手帕，顶在头上。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
The woman said, "That won't do, that won't do."
不好, 不好 — no good, no good. She waves the demand away and produces the machinery instead.
"I have here a kerchief: put it on your head to cover your face, and chance a heaven-made match — I'll have my daughters walk past before you, and whichever one you reach out and catch, that one I'll match with you."
一方手帕, one square kerchief. 撞個天婚 is to chance a heaven-made match: a real folk practice in which a blindfolded party takes whomever fate puts in his hands, closer to blind man's buff than to a wedding. 教我女兒 uses the causative jiào; 扯到那個, catch hold of whichever, takes 那 as nà twice. The rules sound fair. There is nobody in the room to catch.
The blockhead did as told, took the kerchief, and put it on his head.
依言, as told; 接了手帕, 頂在頭上, took the kerchief and set it on his head, with 獃子 taking 子 as the light suffix zi. He blindfolds himself. Nobody makes him.
There is a verse to prove it.
有詩為證, there is a poem in witness, with 為 as wéi, to serve as — the third appearance of this formula in the chapter, after the widow's poem and Tripitaka's.
The verse says:
詩曰, the poem runs. Two couplets follow, and this time the storyteller is speaking, not a character.
Foolish and dull, he knows not the root of the matter; / the sword of lust wounds the body, and in secret undoes him.
痴愚不識本原由, the fool does not know the root of the matter — which is that there is no bride and never was. 色劍傷身, the sword of desire wounds the body, is a moral commonplace about what lust costs. The verse names Bajie a fool while he is standing there in a veil, and he cannot hear it.
From of old there have truly been the rites of the Duke of Zhou; / today the bridegroom dons the veil upon his head.
周公禮 are the marriage rites credited to the Duke of Zhou, the model statesman of high antiquity; his name also became a byword for the marriage bed itself. And against all that venerable machinery the line sets 新郎頂蓋頭, the bridegroom wearing the bridal veil. The joke is exact. The 蓋頭 belongs on the bride, and putting it on the groom turns the whole ceremony inside out in half a line.
She turns down his demand for all three and offers her device instead: a heaven-made match, in which he veils his face with a kerchief and catches whichever daughter he can as they file past. It is a real folk custom repurposed as an instrument of humiliation, and Bajie ties the blindfold on himself without a flicker of suspicion.
The quatrain the storyteller drops in turns the farce toward a moral. It calls Bajie a fool who cannot see the root of the matter — that no bride is waiting — and reaches for the old warning that the sword of lust wounds the body. Even at its broadest the tale keeps its didactic thread running: desire blinds, and here the blinding is made literal, a cloth over the eyes.
The last image seals joke and lesson together. Against the venerable marriage rites of the Duke of Zhou the verse sets a bridegroom wearing the bride's veil. The inversion is precise: the man who wanted three wives has been turned into a blindfolded figure of fun, groping after women who are not there.