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.
Pure farce, staged in four beats: down goes the rake, straight goes the robe, on goes a bit of a swagger, and he arrives with his face on. 斯文氣象 (sī wén qì xiàng) is "an air of cultivation" — 斯文 is the word for the scholarly and refined, and here it is being worn by a pig with a nine-tooth muck-rake. 釘鈀 is that rake, its 鈀 read pá; 直裰 (zhí duō) is the long straight-cut monastic robe. 靦面 (tiǎn miàn) is "brazen-faced, without a blush". 相 in 相迎 is xiāng, "toward"; the 子 of 獃子 is the toneless suffix zi.
In truth, unclear from afar but plain up close — this was how the woman was made:
遠看未實，近看分明 — unclear from a distance, plain up close — is a transition formula, and it doubles here as a joke at Bajie's expense: he has walked the whole way over for a better look. 生得 is "made, formed as", with 得 as the toneless de that links a verb to its description, not the verb dé, "to obtain". 那 points, so nà; the 子 of 女子 is the noun-forming zǐ.
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 the standard pair for a fair and finely made woman: cold, smooth, precious. Then the second line drops the register — 酥胸 (sū xiōng) is frankly sensuous, and it is aimed squarely at the reader standing in front of her. Worth noting that 藏 here is cáng, "to hide", not the zàng that gives Tripitaka his name in 三藏: the same character doing entirely different work a few lines apart.
Willow-brows heaped with kingfisher-black; apricot eyes flashing silver stars.
柳眉 (liǔ méi) and 杏眼 (xìng yǎn) are a fixed pair — willow-leaf brows, slender and curved, and apricot eyes, round and bright. Both are still live compliments in Chinese. 翠黛 (cuì dài) is the blue-black pigment women painted their brows with; 銀星 (yín xīng), silver stars, is the glint in an eye.
Moon-like her bearing, delicately fair; her nature, all untutored, pure.
Here the portrait oversteps. Everything so far has described a surface; this line claims to see inside. 天然性格清 — a nature untaught and clear, where 清 (qīng) is purity, transparency, the absence of anything murky. It is being said of a thing made of bones. The verse has just told the one lie that the reader can catch and Tripitaka cannot.
Her form like a swallow hid in willows; her voice like an oriole warbling the woods.
Two similes, one for how she moves and one for how she sounds: a swallow slipping through willows, an oriole singing in the wood. 藏 is cáng again, "hidden"; 似 is sì, "resembling".
A half-opened crabapple veiling the dawn sun; a peony just blooming, toying with the clear spring day.
The poem finishes on two flowers, both caught in the moment just before full bloom — the 海棠 (hǎi táng), crabapple, half open at dawn, and the 芍藥 (sháo yào), peony, newly out in spring sun. Youth on the point of opening. The mask is complete, and it is beautiful.
Bajie's preening is farce and nothing else — down goes the rake, straight goes the robe, on goes the swagger, and a pig-spirit plays the gallant. The narrator lingers over it because this appetite is the lever the demon means to pull. What Bajie gave up when he took his vows is exactly what will now be used to turn the party against itself.
Like the portrait a few passages back, this one deploys the whole conventional kit — 柳眉, 杏眼, 海棠, 芍藥 — and then goes further, praising the maiden's pure nature. The reader knows every line of it is paint laid over a fiend, so the loveliness of the verse is the trap closing.
The build follows the same pattern as the earlier verse passage: the prose ending on 那女子生得 stays joined to the beauty-poem it introduces, in one passage marked as carrying verse, with the couplets set as separate lines.