獃子相迎 The Idiot Puts on Airs
那獃子放下釘鈀，整整直裰，擺擺搖搖，充作個斯文氣象，一直的靦面相迎。真個是遠看未實，近看分明，那女子生得：那呆子放下钉钯，整整直裰，摆摆摇摇，充作个斯文气象，一直的腼面相迎。真个是远看未实，近看分明，那女子生得：
逐句解 Line by line
That idiot set down his muck-rake, straightened his cassock, and swaggering this way and that, put on a show of scholarly refinement as he went, brazen-faced, to meet her.
獃子 (dāi zi) "idiot," 子 (zi) (suffix). 釘鈀 is Bajie's nine-tooth rake (鈀 (pá)); 直裰 (zhí duō) the monk's long robe. The comedy lies in the mismatch — a pig-spirit affecting 斯文氣象 (sī wén qì xiàng) "a cultured air." 相迎 "to go to meet," 相 (xiāng) (mutually, toward); 靦面 (tiǎn miàn) "brazen-faced, unabashed."
In truth, unclear from afar but plain up close — this was how the woman was made:
A transitional formula: 遠看未實，近看分明 "from a distance uncertain, close up distinct," ushering in the descriptive verse. 那女子 "that woman," 那 (nà) (demonstrative), 子 (zǐ) (the noun nǚzǐ); 生得 "formed as," where 得 (de) is the complement-marker, not the verb 得 (dé).
Ice-flesh concealing jade-bone; her collar baring a creamy breast.
冰肌 (bīng jī) "ice-flesh" and 玉骨 (yù gǔ) "jade-bone" are stock figures for a woman's fair, delicate frame. Here 藏 (cáng) is the verb "to conceal" (not the name-reading 藏 (zàng) of 三藏). 酥胸 (sū xiōng) "soft breast" edges the verse toward the sensuous, priming Bajie's lust.
Willow-brows heaped with kingfisher-black; apricot eyes flashing silver stars.
柳眉 (liǔ méi) "willow-brows" (slender, curved) and 杏眼 (xìng yǎn) "apricot eyes" (round, bright) are the paired conventions for a beauty's features; 翠黛 (cuì dài) the blue-black of painted brows, 銀星 (yín xīng) the glint of shining eyes.
Moon-like her bearing, delicately fair; her nature, all untutored, pure.
月樣容儀 (yuè yàng róng yí) "a moon-like mien"; 天然性格清 "a naturally limpid character." The praise of inward 清 (qīng) "purity" is the verse's cruellest stroke — this is a corpse-fiend, and the innocence is wholly painted on.
Her form like a swallow hid in willows; her voice like an oriole warbling the woods.
Two similes of grace and sweetness — the swallow among willows for lithe movement, the oriole's song for a melodious voice. Again 藏 (cáng) "to hide"; 似 (sì) "resembling."
A half-opened crabapple veiling the dawn sun; a peony just blooming, toying with the clear spring day.
The couplet closes on two flower-figures of dewy, nascent loveliness — the 海棠 (hǎi táng) crabapple half-open at dawn, the 芍藥 (sháo yào) peony newly blown in spring sunshine. The lush imagery completes the demon's mask.
Bajie's preening is pure farce — setting down the rake, straightening his robe, affecting "a cultured air" as the pig-spirit plays the gallant. The narrator lingers on the comedy because Bajie's lust is the very lever the demon means to work: an appetite he was supposed to have renounced becomes the mechanism by which the party will be turned against itself.
Like the 律詩 of P7, this beauty-portrait deploys the full conventional apparatus — 柳眉, 杏眼, 海棠, 芍藥 — and even lauds the maiden's "pure nature." The reader knows every line to be a fabrication laid over a fiend, so the verse's loveliness is itself the trap tightening.
As with P7 this is a verse-tagged 含詞賦 passage: the prose block ending on 那女子生得： is joined to the beauty-verse it introduces, the couplets set as individual lines.