The pilgrim reined in his cloud-head, with no heart for sightseeing.

按落雲頭 is to press the cloud-head down and land. 無心玩景 is in no mood to enjoy the scenery. This is a small, human touch: the immortal isles have started to pall on a hero with a deadline.

As he walked along, he caught a rich waft of fragrant wind and the cry of a dark crane, and there, off to one side, stood an immortal.

聞得 is caught the scent of, 得 the toneless de. 玄鶴 is a dark crane, another bird of the immortals. 那壁廂 is a colloquial over on that side -- literally over by that wall.

And this is what he saw:

但見, and this is what he saw, cues another descriptive verse.

Filling the sky, ten thousand shafts of rosy light appear; colored mists drift and flutter, their glow unbroken.

萬道霞光 is ten thousand shafts of sunset-glow; 飄颻 (piāo yáo) is fluttering, wafting. The portrait of the immortal Donghua begins with the weather around him.

A cinnabar phoenix, a flower in its beak, is fresher still; an azure luan wheels in dance, its cry sweet and bright.

啣花 is holding a flower in the beak, 啣 being a way of writing 銜, xián. 丹鳳 and 青鸞, the vermilion phoenix and azure luán, turn up wherever this novel wants to signal splendour.

His fortune like the Eastern Sea, his years like the mountains; his looks those of a young child, his body hale.

福如東海, 壽比南山 -- fortune like the Eastern Sea, long life like the Southern Mountain -- is a birthday greeting so common that Chinese birthday cards still print it. The poem borrows the first half and swaps a mountain into the second. 貌似小童, a face like a child's, is the mark of an immortal who has run age backwards; 似 is read sì.

In his gourd lies hidden a cave-heaven's deathless elixir; at his waist hangs, bright as the sun, a talisman of long life.

壺 ... 洞天, a cave-heaven inside a gourd, points to the old story of an immortal who kept an entire paradise in his flask and climbed in at the end of the working day. It is the original pocket universe. 長生篆 is a long-life talisman, 長 = cháng -- a written charm, since in this world writing something is a way of making it so.

Time and again he sends down good omens to the mortal world; how often he has dissolved men's calamities and granted their prayers.

降禎祥 is to send down auspicious signs, 降 = jiàng; 數次 is several times, 數 = shù in its counting sense; 消厄 is to dissolve a calamity. Donghua is being presented as a working benefactor, not a remote power.

Emperor Wu once summoned him to bestow added years; at the Jasper Pool he attends each Feast of Peaches.

武帝 is Emperor Wu of Han, who spent a great deal of his reign and his treasury hunting for immortality and became, in later legend, the mortal every immortal has met. 瑤池 and the 蟠桃宴, the Jasper Pool and the Feast of Immortal Peaches, are the Queen Mother's celebrated banquet -- the one Wukong once wrecked.

He guides the host of monks to shed their worldly ties, and points open the Great Way, bright as a lightning-flash.

脫俗緣 is to shed worldly attachments; 指開大道 is to point the Great Way open. Donghua teaches as well as blesses, which broadens his portfolio considerably.

He has bestridden the seas to wish long life, and often goes to Spirit Mountain to pay court before the Buddha.

Note where he goes on his travels. 跨海祝千秋 is to cross the seas to offer birthday wishes; 靈山參佛 is to attend on the Buddha at Spirit Mountain, 參 = cān, to pay reverent audience. A senior Daoist deity paying his respects to the Buddha is the sort of detail that shows how comfortably this novel holds both faiths at once.

His holy title is the Great Sovereign Lord of the Eastern Splendor — first among the immortal kindred of mist and glow.

東華大帝君 -- also 東華帝君, the Great Sovereign of the East -- is a high Daoist deity, lord of the eastern quarter and of the male immortals, with the Queen Mother of the West as his counterpart. 神仙眷 is the immortal company or kindred.