又到方丈 On to Fangzhang
且不說八戒打諢亂纏。卻表行者縱祥雲離了蓬萊，又早到方丈仙山，這山真好去處。有詩為證。詩曰：且不说八戒打诨乱缠。却表行者纵祥云离了蓬莱，又早到方丈仙山，这山真好去处。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
But we shall say no more of Bajie's clowning and pestering.
打諢亂纏 is cracking jokes and making a nuisance of yourself -- a fair summary of Bajie's last two scenes. 且不說, let us leave aside, is the storyteller putting one thread down.
Rather let us tell how the pilgrim, springing up on his auspicious cloud, left Penglai and came in no time to the immortal mountain of Fangzhang — and a truly fine place it was.
卻表, now to relate, is the matching formula that picks the other thread up. Put the two together and you have the standard Chinese scene-change, used thousands of times across the novel. 方丈仙山 is the immortal mountain Fangzhang, second of the three sacred isles.
There is a poem to prove it:
有詩為證, there is a poem in witness, 為證 read wéi zhèng, as proof.
The poem says:
詩曰, the poem says, heads the verse.
Fangzhang towers lofty, a separate heaven of its own; in the palace-halls of Great Prime the immortals gather.
巍峨 is towering and majestic; 別是天 is a separate heaven, a world of its own. 太元宮府 (tài yuán) is the Palace of Great Prime, the mountain's celestial court -- 府 being an administrative seat, so the immortals have offices here too.
From purple terraces light falls on the road of the Three Pure Ones; from flowers and trees a fragrance floats amid five-colored mist.
紫臺, the purple terrace, is another immortal palace. 三清, the Three Pure Ones, are the highest Daoist deities, the closest thing the tradition has to a trinity. 五色煙, five-coloured vapour, is the standard haze over a numinous place.
Golden phoenixes, many of themselves, coil about the flower-towers; and the jade cream — who is it presses it to water the fields of magic fungus?
槃蕊闕 is to coil about the blossom-towers, 槃 = pán, to wind or circle. 玉膏, jade cream, is a mythical elixir-substance; 芝田 are the fields where the immortals' numinous zhī-fungus grows. The line asks who does the watering, and expects no answer.
The jasper peaches and purple plums are newly come to ripeness — another token, once again, that ten thousand years have turned for the immortals.
This is the best line in the poem. 碧桃紫李, emerald peaches and purple plums, ripen -- and the ripening is itself the calendar. 換 ... 信 is to change the tally, to mark the token: each crop marks off another 萬年, another ten thousand years. In a place with no death there is nothing else to measure time by, so the orchard does it.
The narrative turns, with its customary pair of formulas -- let us say no more of, and rather let us tell how -- from Bajie's antics back to Wukong's quest, which now brings him to Fangzhang, the second of the three sacred isles. As at Penglai, the change of scene is marked by a descriptive poem unrolling the standard splendours of an immortal mountain: purple terraces, the road of the Three Pure Ones, phoenixes and jade elixirs and fields of magic fungus.
The verse's closing image is quietly resonant. Peaches and plums coming newly to ripeness stand as the token that another ten thousand years have turned -- an orchard serving as a calendar for a place outside time. It is an apt note on which to arrive. Wukong has come to the isles of the deathless hunting a cure for a slain deathless tree, and the poem's vision of endless self-renewing life throws his errand, and the fragility of even an immortal growth, into gentle relief.