半空本相 The Immortal's True Form
大仙在半空現了本相，你看他怎生打扮：大仙在半空现了本相，你看他怎生打扮：
逐句解 Line by line
In mid-air the Great Immortal showed his true form. Behold how he was got up:
現了本相, xiàn le běn xiàng, "showed his original form," with 相 as xiàng, "appearance," not the xiāng that means "mutually." 怎生打扮 is the same storyteller's cue as before — and the repetition is deliberate, since we are about to see the same man dressed twice.
On his head a purple-gold coronet; a care-free crane-down cloak he wore;
紫金冠, zǐ jīn guān, a coronet of purple gold, with 冠 as the noun guān, "cap," not the verb guàn, "to crown." 鶴氅, hè chǎng, is a cloak of crane feathers or crane-white down — the crane being the bird immortals ride and the standard emblem of long life. 無憂, "care-free," is doing double duty: it describes the cloak and the man wearing it.
slippers upon his feet below, a silk sash bound about his waist;
履鞋, lǚ xié, soft shoes. 絲帶束腰間, a silk sash at the waist — and note the quiet upgrade from the beggar's woven cord of a few passages ago. 間 is jiān, the space or midst of a thing.
his body like a young boy's shape, his face the hue of a beautiful woman;
The strangest and best line of the portrait: a child's body, a beautiful woman's face. In Daoist thinking this is not a compliment about looks but a diagnosis — the perfected adept reverses ageing and returns to the condition of an infant, so a youthful body on an immeasurably old man is the visible proof of attainment. 童子 takes the full noun 子, zǐ; 似 is sì, "to resemble."
three whiskers streaming beneath his chin, raven plumes layered at his temples.
And then the beard, which places him after all. 三鬚飄頷下, three whiskers floating below the chin, with 鬚, xū, beard, and 頷, hàn, chin. 鴉翎疊鬢邊, hair black as raven plumes layered at the temples, with 翎, líng, a feather, and 鬢, bìn, the sidelocks.
He met the Pilgrim bearing no weapon at all, only twirling a jade deer-whisk in his hand.
The closing line is the one that matters. He comes to meet an armed opponent 無兵器, with no weapon, holding nothing but the jade-handled whisk from his beggar's costume. 相迎 takes 相 as xiāng, "toward each other"; 止將玉麈手中撚 puts the whisk up front with 將, jiāng, and 撚, niǎn, is to twirl something between the fingers.
The second portrait answers the first. The beggar's rags become purple gold and crane feathers, the woven cord becomes silk — but the whisk stays, and it is the whisk the verse ends on. He comes to meet a cudgel, a rake and a staff carrying an ornament.
The strange central image is the body of a child with the face of a beautiful woman. Read as description this is merely odd; read as doctrine it is precise. Daoist practice aims at reversing the direction of a life, unwinding the body back toward the softness and completeness of an infant, and a man as old as the age itself wearing a boy's frame is displaying his credentials. Beauty here is a technical achievement.
And the elegance is the menace. Everything in the portrait is calm, weightless, floating — whiskers drifting, feathers layered, a whisk turning between two fingers — while the opponent coming up at him is all iron and shouting. The reader is told who is going to win before a single blow is struck.