The Great Sage worked a spell of invisibility and slipped into the Daoist quarters to look; but the two boys, having eaten the fruit, had gone up to the hall to talk with the Tang Monk, and were not in the room.

隱身法, yǐn shēn fǎ, a spell of invisibility — one of the seventy-two transformations. The room is empty because the boys are up in the hall being polite to his master.

Pilgrim looked about him for any golden striker, and saw only, hung on the window-lattice, a rod of red gold some two chǐ long and thick as a finger; its lower end was a knob like a garlic-clove, its upper end pierced with an eye and threaded through with a green silk cord.

The striker is described like a museum catalogue entry, and every detail earns its place. A rod of red gold — metal, which is what matters. Two chǐ long, about sixty centimetres, and finger-thick. A garlic-clove knob at the striking end, an eye at the other with a green silk cord through it, so it can hang on the lattice. 系著 takes 系 as xì: this is the "suspend, attach" character, whose only historical reading is 胡計切, and not 繫, which carries a second jì band. 掛著 and 系著 both take the durative zhe.

He said, "This must be the thing they call the golden striker."

想必, xiǎng bì, "it must be." He is guessing from the shape, and guessing right.

He took it down, went out of the Daoist quarters, and made straight for the back; he pushed open a double door, raised his head to look — ah!

呀 here is yā, the exclamation of surprise standing as its own sentence — distinct from the closing ya that ends 好女婿呀 and 好東西呀 elsewhere in this chapter. A rule that holds throughout: 呀 alone before an exclamation mark is yā; 呀 trailing a phrase is ya.

— it was a flower garden!

And the chapter pauses for its third rhapsody.

And this is what he saw:

但見, dàn jiàn — "and this is what met the eye." The standard cue into a descriptive set-piece.

Vermilion railings, jewelled balustrades; winding stonework, peaks piled like hills.

朱欄寶檻 — and 檻 is jiàn here, the railing, not kǎn, the threshold. 康熙 quotes 正韻 splitting the two by sense: the railing sense takes the departing tone, while the rising tone belongs to 檻檻 (the rumble of cart-wheels) and 檻泉 (a welling spring). This is the 檻 of Wang Bo's famous line 檻外長江空自流. 曲砌, terraced stonework built up like miniature peaks.

Rare blossoms vied in beauty with the fair sun; kingfisher bamboo contended in green with the blue sky.

爭妍 and 鬥碧, vying in beauty and contending in green — the rhapsody's habit of making the scenery compete with the sky.

Beyond the Floating-Cup Pavilion, a bend of green willows trailed like mist;

The 流杯亭, Floating-Cup Pavilion, is named for a real amusement: guests sat along a winding channel and drank from cups floated down to them, composing verse before the cup arrived. The most famous instance is Wang Xizhi's gathering at the Orchid Pavilion in 353. 似 is the comparative sì.

before the Moon-Viewing Terrace, clumps of tall pines stood dark as spilt indigo.

賞月臺, the Moon-Viewing Terrace — the matching structure, and the matching line. 如潑靛, like dashed indigo: the pines are so dark green they look spilt.

Ruddy and glowing, the brocade-nested pomegranate;

Four short lines follow, each a colour-reduplication plus a plant, ticking past like beads. 紅拂拂, glowing red; 錦巢榴, the pomegranate whose fruit sits in the foliage like a brocade nest.

soft and green, the embroidered-cushion grass;

綠依依, tenderly green; 繡墩草, grass like an embroidered stool-cushion — a real garden plant, liriope, named for its neat rounded clump.

downy and blue-green, the jasper-sand orchid;

青茸茸, downy blue-green; 碧砂蘭, orchid growing on jasper sand.

and rippling wide, the water along the brook.

攸蕩蕩, broadly rippling. The fourth of the four, and the sequence closes on water.

Cinnabar cassia set off the golden-well parasol-trees; brocade pagoda-locusts leaned by vermilion rails and jade steps.

金井, a "golden well," is a well with an ornamental carved curb — a stock image of a wealthy courtyard. 梧桐, the parasol tree; 錦槐, the brocade pagoda-locust.

There were peaches of a thousand petals, now red, now white; and chrysanthemums of deep autumn, now fragrant, now yellow.

千葉桃, the thousand-petalled peach, an ornamental double-flowered variety; 九秋菊, chrysanthemum of the ninth month. Note that the garden holds spring and autumn flowers simultaneously, which no real garden does — a quiet signal that this is not an ordinary place.

The tumi-rose trellis threw its light against the peony pavilion;

荼䕷, tú mí, is the rambling rose Rubus rosifolius, also written 酴醾 — the last flower of spring, and for that reason a standing poetic emblem of the season's end. Its second character 䕷 is a rare one, which is why it needs saying. 映著 takes the durative zhe; 牡丹亭, the peony pavilion.

the hibiscus terrace ran on into the peony-herb plot.

木槿, mù jǐn, hibiscus or rose-of-Sharon; 芍藥, sháo yào, the herbaceous peony, traditionally paired with the tree peony of the line before as its junior partner. 相連 takes the reciprocal xiāng.

Past all seeing were the frost-defying gentleman-bamboo and the snow-scorning grandee-pine.

Both plants carry titles. Bamboo is the 君子, the gentleman, for bending without breaking; the pine is the 大夫, the grandee, from the legend that the First Emperor ennobled a pine that sheltered him from a storm. So "frost-defying gentleman-bamboo" and "snow-scorning grandee-pine" are not decoration but rank. 君子 takes the honorific zǐ, against the suffix zi of 繩兒-type words. And 看不盡 once more, with 不 rising to bú.

And there were besides the crane-lodge and the deer-house, square pools and round ponds;

鶴莊鹿宅, lodges for cranes and houses for deer — both animals of immortality, kept as a gentleman keeps horses.

the springs flowed with shattered jade, the ground-blossoms heaped up gold.

碎玉, shattered jade, for the broken water; 堆金, heaped gold, for fallen blossom. Standard, and elegantly compact.

The north wind, brushing them open, whitened the plum-blossom; the coming of spring dotted the crabapple red.

The seasonal impossibility again, stated outright: the north wind opens the plum, and then spring reddens the crabapple. Winter and spring in one couplet.

Truly this was called the first immortal scene in all the mortal world, the chief flowering-grove of the West.

魁首, kuí shǒu, the first, the champion. The rhapsody closes by claiming the garden is the finest in the mortal world — and, for once in this novel, nobody contradicts it.