老僧含羞 The Elder Is Shamed
那唐僧那裡肯信，只說是個好人。行者道：「師父，我知道你了，你見他那等容貌，必然動了凡心。若果有此意，叫八戒伐幾棵樹來，沙僧尋些草來，我做木匠，就在這裡搭個窩鋪，你與他圓房成事，我們大家散了，卻不是件事業？何必又跋涉，取甚經去？」那長老原是個軟善的人，那裡吃得他這句言語，羞得光頭徹耳通紅。那唐僧那里肯信，只说是个好人。行者道：「师父，我知道你了，你见他那等容貌，必然动了凡心。若果有此意，叫八戒伐几棵树来，沙僧寻些草来，我做木匠，就在这里搭个窝铺，你与他圆房成事，我们大家散了，却不是件事业？何必又跋涉，取甚经去？」那长老原是个软善的人，那里吃得他这句言语，羞得光头彻耳通红。
逐句解 Line by line
But the Tang Monk would by no means believe it, insisting only that she was a good person.
那唐僧 "that Tang Monk," 那 (nà) (demonstrative, first); 那裡肯信 "how would [he] believe," 那裡 (nǎ lǐ) rhetorical, 那 (nǎ) (second). The flat report of the elder's obstinacy — set against Wukong's just-concluded, experience-backed warning — measures how completely appearance has overmastered evidence in his mind.
Said Pilgrim, "Master, I know you: seeing a face like hers, you're bound to have felt the stir of a carnal heart.
我知道你了 "I know [what] you [are about]." 那等容貌 "that sort of face," 那 (nà). 動了凡心 (dòng le fán xīn) "stirred a mortal/carnal heart" — Wukong turns on the elder the same charge the narrator laid on Bajie, a barbed and dangerous jest.
"If that's really your mind, then have Eight Rules fell a few trees and Sha Monk gather some grass, and I'll play carpenter and knock together a hut right here, where you can consummate the match with her and be done — and we'll all go our separate ways. Wouldn't that be a tidy piece of business?
圓房成事 (yuán fáng chéng shì) "to consummate the marriage." 搭個窩鋪 "to put up a rude hut"; 散了 (sàn le) "[we'd] all disband," 散 (sàn). 事業 (shì yè) here ironically "a fine piece of work." Wukong's mockery is deliberately outrageous — proposing the pilgrims build the monk a nuptial hut and abandon the quest — a taunt calculated to wound.
"Why go to all the trouble of the journey — what scriptures would there be left to fetch?"
跋涉 (bá shè) "to trudge, toil over roads and rivers." 取甚經去 "fetch what scriptures" — 甚 (shén) "what." Wukong presses the jibe to its logical end: if the master will yield to a pretty face, the whole pilgrimage is void. It is a cruel argument, and it lands.
The elder, being by nature a soft and gentle soul, could not stomach words like these, and blushed a burning red from his shaven crown to the tips of his ears.
那長老 "that elder," 那 (nà) (first), 長 (zhǎng); 那裡吃得 "could hardly bear/stomach," 那裡 (nǎ lǐ) rhetorical (那 (nǎ), second), 得 (de) the complement; the second 得 (de) in 羞得 "so ashamed that." 軟善 (ruǎn shàn) "soft and good-natured." The blush from crown to ears is the humiliation that will, in the next passage, harden into anger and the reciting of the spell.
Wukong's tactics here shift from warning to taunt, and the shift is a miscalculation as much as a provocation. Stung by the master's refusal, he flings back the very charge the narrator had laid on Bajie — that a pretty face has stirred a "carnal heart" — and then compounds it with the outrageous proposal that the pilgrims build the monk a nuptial hut and abandon the quest. It is wit turned weapon, and it cuts.
The passage turns on Tripitaka's temperament. He is 軟善, soft and gentle, and it is precisely this softness — not stupidity — that cannot "stomach" Wukong's mockery. The blush that spreads from his shaven crown to his ears is shame, and shame in a proud-humble man curdles quickly. The reader can feel the scene tipping: the elder's humiliation is the fuel that the next passage's spell will ignite.
Beneath the comedy runs the chapter's deepest irony. Wukong is right about the demon and wrong in his handling of the master; his correct sight is delivered so woundingly that it guarantees rejection. The tragedy of the White-Bone Demon is authored as much by the disciple's tongue as by the master's blindness.