八戒攛掇 Bajie Stirs the Pot
行者道：「師父又教我去？回去便也回去了，只是一件不相應。」唐僧道：「你有甚麼不相應處？」八戒道：「師父，他要和你分行李哩。跟著你做了這幾年和尚，不成空著手回去？你把那包袱內的甚麼舊褊衫，破帽子、分兩件與他罷。」行者道：「师父又教我去？回去便也回去了，只是一件不相应。」唐僧道：「你有甚么不相应处？」八戒道：「师父，他要和你分行李哩。跟著你做了这几年和尚，不成空著手回去？你把那包袱内的甚么旧褊衫，破帽子、分两件与他罢。」
逐句解 Line by line
Said Pilgrim, "Master, you send me off again?
師父又教我去 (shī fu yòu jiào wǒ qù) "Master, you have me go again," 教 (jiào). Wukong's weary question registers the repetition — this is the second expulsion, and the pattern is wearing on him.
"To go back would be to go back — only there's one thing that isn't right."
不相應 (bù xiāng yìng) "does not fit, is not right" — 相 (xiāng) "mutually," 應 (yìng) "correspond": 相應 "to match, be fitting." Wukong raises a scruple; Bajie, mischievously, will supply his own crude interpretation of it.
The Tang Monk said, "What is it you find not right?"
甚麼不相應處 (shén me bù xiāng yìng chù) "what point [you find] unfitting," 甚 (shén), 相 (xiāng), 應 (yìng). The elder's question opens the way for Bajie's mischief-making.
Said Eight Rules, "Master, he wants to split the luggage with you.
分行李 (fēn xíng li) "to divide the baggage," 行 (xíng) (行李 "luggage," not 行 (háng)). Bajie mischievously recasts Wukong's vague "one thing not right" as a demand to split the party's goods — a petty, mercenary motive that Wukong never voiced, sowing further discord.
"Having followed you and played the monk these few years, is he to go back empty-handed?
跟著 "following," 著 (zhe); 空著手 (kōng zhe shǒu) "empty-handed," again the aspect-marker 著 (zhe). Bajie ventriloquizes a grievance for Wukong — years of service deserving some parting share — that is entirely Bajie's own invention.
"Out of that bundle, hand him a couple of things — some old tunic, a battered hat — and let him go."
那包袱 (nà bāo fú) "that bundle," 那 (nà). 甚麼舊褊衫 (shén me jiù biǎn shān) "some old tunic," 甚 (shén); 帽子 (mào zi) "hat," 子 (zi). Bajie's suggestion — fob Wukong off with a cast-off tunic and a broken hat — is calculatedly insulting, a small malice piled on the larger injustice.
Bajie's role as the demon's unwitting ally reaches its meanest here. Wukong raises only a vague scruple — "one thing isn't right" — and Bajie, still spiteful, fills the blank with a mercenary motive Wukong never expressed: that he wants to "split the luggage," to be paid off for his years of service. It is pure invention, and it works precisely because it is petty and plausible.
The malice is in the detail. Bajie proposes fobbing Wukong off with "some old tunic, a battered hat" — a parting insult calculated to demean. Where the demon supplies the illusions and the master supplies the blindness, Bajie supplies the small, corrosive interpretations that keep the wound open, transmuting a tragic misunderstanding into something sordid.
The scene sets up Wukong's great protest in the next passage. Stung by the imputation of greed, he will answer not with a claim on the luggage but with a proud recitation of the glory he gave up to follow Tripitaka — turning Bajie's petty slur into the occasion for the chapter's most moving assertion of loyalty.