The woman said, "I was born in the dīng-hài year, on the third day of the third month, in the hour of yǒu; my late husband was three years my senior, and I am this year forty-five."

She produces her own horoscope, which is what a matchmaker would hand over about the bride. 丁亥年 is a year named in the sixty-year cycle that pairs the ten Heavenly Stems with the twelve Earthly Branches; 酉時 is the hour of the Cock, roughly five to seven in the evening. 故夫 is my late husband. Birth data of exactly this kind was matched between families before any Chinese marriage was agreed, so handing it over unprompted is a broad hint.

"My eldest girl is named Zhenzhen, this year twenty; the second is named Aiai, this year eighteen; the third little one is named Lianlian, this year sixteen — and none is yet betrothed to any family."

The daughters' names give the game away as loudly as the surnames did: 真真, True-true; 愛愛, Love-love; 憐憐, Pity-pity. These are not names, they are labels on a set of qualities. 俱不曾許配, none is yet promised in marriage — the crucial commercial detail, saved for last.

"Homely though I am, my girls are lucky enough to have some measure of good looks, and in women's work — needle and thread — there is nothing they cannot do."

醜陋, plain and ill-favoured, is conventional self-deprecation and nobody is meant to believe it. 幾分顏色 is a few degrees of good looks; 女工針指 is women's work, needle and thread; 無所不會, there is nothing they cannot do.

"Because my late husband had no son, I raised them as though they were sons; in their childhood I even had them read some Confucian books, and they all know a little of chanting verse and matching couplets."

One segment, two readings of the same character, side by side. In 無子 the 子 is the full noun zǐ, a son; in the 兒子 that follows it is the light suffix zi. 當兒子看養, raised them as sons, takes 當 as the verb dàng, to treat as. 都 is dōu; 曉得 has the structural de. 吟詩作對, chanting verse and matching couplets, is the accomplishment of a genteel household — she is advertising education alongside looks.

"Though we dwell in a mountain manor, we are not of the utterly coarse and vulgar sort; I should think we might well be a match for you gentlemen elders."

那十分粗俗 takes the pointing 那 (nà), with 十分 meaning utterly. 配得過, good enough to be matched with, uses the structural de; 列位長老, you several elders, reads 長 as zhǎng.

"If you would but open your hearts, grow out your hair and keep a full head of it, and become masters of my house — wearing damask and silk brocade — it would be far better than begging-bowl and black robe, straw sandals and rain-hat."

Now she puts the two lives side by side and asks them to choose. 長髮留頭 is to let the hair grow and keep it — that is, to abandon the monk's shaved head, the visible mark of the vow; here 長 is zhǎng, to grow. 家長, head of household, also takes zhǎng. 著錦, to wear brocade, takes 著 as the lexical zhuó, to put on. Against silk she sets 瓦缽緇衣 and 芒鞋雲笠, clay bowl and black robe, straw sandals and rain-hat — the monk's entire kit, itemised so it sounds like poverty rather than freedom.

Tripitaka sat above them, for all the world like a child startled by thunder, like a toad in a downpour: only stiff and staring, rolling up the whites of his eyes and tipping backward.

The novel gives up on dignity for a moment and just describes him. 雷驚的孩子, 雨淋的蝦蟆 — a child startled by thunder, a toad caught in a downpour (孩子 with the light suffix zi). 呆呆掙掙 is dazed and rigid; 翻白眼 is to roll the whites of the eyes up. He is not arguing. He is having something closer to a seizure.