松陰莊院 The Farmstead in the Pines
好大聖，把金箍棒揝一揝，萬道彩雲生。那馬看見拿棒，恐怕打來，慌得四隻蹄疾如飛電，颼的跑將去了。那師父手軟勒不住，盡他劣性，奔上山崖，才大達辿步走。師父喘息始定，擡頭遠見一簇松陰，內有幾間房舍，著實軒昂，但見：好大圣，把金箍棒揝一揝，万道彩云生。那马看见拿棒，恐怕打来，慌得四只蹄疾如飞电，飕的跑将去了。那师父手软勒不住，尽他劣性，奔上山崖，才大达辿步走。师父喘息始定，抬头远见一簇松阴，内有几间房舍，着实轩昂，但见：
逐句解 Line by line
What a Great Sage! — with a single clench of the gold-banded cudgel, a myriad shafts of colored cloud sprang forth.
好大聖, what a Great Sage! is the storyteller's stock cheer, dropped in whenever Wukong is about to do something. 金箍棒 (jīn gū bàng) is the gold-hooped cudgel; 揝 (zǎn) is to grip or clutch; 萬道彩雲 is ten thousand streamers of coloured cloud. He only clenches it. That is the whole action.
The horse, seeing the cudgel raised and fearing a blow, took fright — its four hooves swift as flying lightning — and went whistling off at a gallop.
And the horse bolts. 慌得 takes the light de of so-frightened-that. 疾如飛電, swift as flying lightning; 颼的 (sōu de) is the sound of something going past you fast. In 跑將去了 the 將 is a verb-tail, jiāng, ran off.
The Master, his hands gone weak, could not rein him in and let the beast have its wilful head; up the mountain scarp it bolted, and only then eased to a heavy, plodding stride.
Tripitaka, on top of the bolting horse, is having a worse time than anyone. 勒 is lè, to rein in, as in 勒馬 — not the colloquial lēi of hauling a cord tight round something. 盡他劣性 — 盡 (jìn) is to give free rein to, 劣性 is the beast's unruly streak. 大達辿步 is a lumbering gait, with 辿 (chān) to tread slowly.
When the Master's panting had at last settled, he raised his head and saw far off a cluster of pine-shade, within which stood several buildings, truly grand and imposing. Behold:
He gets his breath back and sees the house. 一簇松陰 is a clump of pine-shade. 著實 is zhuó shí, meaning truly, solidly — the first of six appearances of 著 as zhuó in this chapter, and the only one used this way. 軒昂 (xuān áng) is lofty and imposing; 但見, and this is what he saw, hands the description over to verse.
The gate hung with kingfisher cypress; / the homestead nestled by green hills.
The estate poem opens in four-and-four. 翠柏, kingfisher-green cypress, is set against 青山, green hills — two greens, deliberately different ones.
A few pines, soft and swaying; / several bamboo-stalks, dappled and mottled.
冉冉 (rǎn rǎn) is softly drooping and swaying; 斑斑 (bān bān) is dappled, the mottling on bamboo skin. 數 is shù, several.
By the hedge, wild chrysanthemums glow, frost-touched and bright; / at the bridge, secluded orchids mirror crimson in the stream.
凝霜艷 is beauty set hard with frost; 映水丹 is cinnabar-red thrown back off the water. Autumn colour, one clause answering the other.
Whitewashed walls of daubed clay; / an encircling enclosure of laid brick.
粉泥 is whitewash plaster. 圍圜 (wéi huán) is an encircling wall, with 圜 read huán, to surround, doubling the sense of 圍 in front of it.
The high hall, how splendid and grand; / the great mansion, how serene and still.
甚 is shèn here, the intensifier very, exceedingly — not the shén of what, which turns up elsewhere in this chapter. 大廈 is the great house. The couplet is all ease and calm, which makes the next one land harder.
No ox or sheep in sight, no cock or hound; / it must be that, the autumn harvest gathered, the farm-work lies at rest.
In 不見 the 不 lifts to bú before the falling tone of 見. 秋收 is the autumn ingathering, 農事閑 the slack season after it. And here is the first thing that is wrong with this beautiful place: not one ox, sheep, cock or dog anywhere. The verse supplies a reasonable explanation. Hold on to it — the explanation is the problem.
One small act of cruelty sets everything moving. Wukong clenches the cudgel purely to menace, and the dragon-horse — which is, for the moment, only a horse — bolts up the slope in terror with Tripitaka clinging on. The joke rebounds onto Bajie, whose complaint about the pace caused it, and it deposits the pilgrims, whether they like it or not, on the threshold of the trial.
Then the estate poem, a set-piece of the house-seen-from-outside kind, built from tightly matched couplets that work inward from gate and hills to walls and hall. On the surface it is an idyll: pine-shade, frost-bright chrysanthemum, orchid mirrored in a stream — prosperous rural retirement, painted with care.
The last couplet plants the first unease. No ox, no sheep, no cock, no hound; and the verse explains it away as the quiet after harvest. A reader who knows this novel's methods will hear something else in that silence. The too-perfect, too-empty household is the bodhisattvas' handiwork, and its stillness is the stillness of a set built for one night's performance.