徑上蓬萊 Off to Penglai
好猴王，急縱觔斗雲，別了五莊觀，徑上東洋大海。在半空中，快如掣電，疾如流星，早到蓬萊仙境。按雲頭，往下仔細觀看，真個好去處。有詩為證。詩曰：好猴王，急纵觔斗云，别了五庄观，径上东洋大海。在半空中，快如掣电，疾如流星，早到蓬莱仙境。按云头，往下仔细观看，真个好去处。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
Fine Monkey King! He leapt up on his somersault cloud, took his leave of the Five-Villages Abbey, and made straight for the Great Eastern Ocean.
觔斗雲, also written 筋斗雲, is the somersault cloud: one flip and Wukong is a hundred and eight thousand lǐ away, a lǐ being roughly a third of a mile. 斗 is read dǒu. 五莊觀 (Wǔzhuāng Guàn) is the Five-Villages Abbey, Zhenyuan's cloister, with 觀 in its abbey reading guàn.
High in the air, swift as a lightning-flash, quick as a shooting star, he came in no time to the immortal realm of Penglai.
掣電, darting lightning, and 流星, a shooting star, are the off-the-shelf comparisons for speed. The novel is not straining for freshness here; it is signalling that we have jumped scenes. 蓬萊 (Pénglái) is the best known of the three sacred isles of the eastern sea, and the first stop on the tour.
Reining in his cloud, he looked down and gazed carefully — a truly fine place indeed.
按雲頭 is to press down on the head of the cloud, which is how you land one. 仔細 (zǐ xì) is carefully, closely. Notice 觀 back in its plain verb sense, to look at, read guān -- a couple of lines after the same character meant abbey and was read guàn.
There is a poem to prove it:
有詩為證, there is a poem in witness, is the reciter's standard hand-off into a set-piece of description. 為證 (wéi zhèng) is as proof. Nothing is actually being proved; the formula is a cue for the audience to settle in.
The poem says:
詩曰, the poem says, heads the verse itself. The double announcement -- first there is a poem, then the poem says -- is belt and braces, and entirely standard.
On the great earth, an immortals' land where ranks of sages throng; Penglai, now parting, now joined, holds down the surging waves.
仙鄉 is the immortals' country; 列聖曹 is the assembled ranks of the sages, 曹 being an office or bureau. Heaven is organised, as usual in this novel, like a civil service. 分合, parting and joining, catches the way the isle drifts in and out of the mist, while 鎮 has it holding the ocean's swell down.
The jasper terrace dips its reflection where the heart of heaven is cold; the great gate-towers' light floats high upon the ocean's face.
瑤臺, the jasper terrace, is standard immortal architecture. 影蘸 is exact and lovely: the terrace dips its own reflection into the water the way a brush is dipped into ink. 巨闕 are the great paired gate-towers of the city.
Mists and glow of five hues enfold the jade pipes' music; from the ninefold empyrean, star and moon strike the golden turtle.
玉籟, jade pipes, is the music of the heavens. 金鰲 (jīn áo) is the giant golden sea-turtle that carries the floating isles on its back -- the 列子 tells the story, and it explains why Penglai can drift about instead of staying put.
The Queen Mother of the Western Pool comes often to this place, to offer the three immortals her peaches, time and again.
西池王母 is the 西王母, Queen Mother of the West, whose 瑤池 or Jasper Pool lies far to the west and whose 蟠桃 peaches confer deathlessness. Wukong knows those peaches intimately; raiding them is a large part of how he ended up under a mountain. 三仙 are the three presiding immortals of the sacred isles.
The quest proper begins with a flourish. The somersault cloud takes Wukong from the Five-Villages Abbey to Penglai inside a single sentence, and the narrative then stops, as it usually does at a change of scene, to unroll a descriptive poem. The formula there is a poem in witness is a fossil of the novel's origins in performance, where a set-piece like this gave the reciter his moment.
The verse assembles the standard furniture of the immortal isles: jasper terraces and gate-towers, five-hued mists, the pipes of heaven, and the golden turtle from the 列子 that carries the floating mountains about on its back. The Queen Mother of the West arriving with her deathlessness-conferring peaches, over and over, marks Penglai as a place outside death -- fitting ground for a hero hunting the secret of raising the dead.
The passage also turns the chapter structurally. From here it becomes a tour of the eastern paradise, and Wukong will call at Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou in turn before his search yields anything. The grandeur of the opening description sets the scale of the journey, and, by placing the cure among the highest immortals, quietly raises the question of whether even they can undo what he has done.