When the Great Sage heard these words, his sorrow grew keener still. He asked, “How many of you are left on this mountain?”

那 is nà, that. 聞得 takes the unstressed de; 還 is hái, still; 多少 takes shǎo. His question — how many are left — assumes there is a number small enough to ask about, and he is right.

The monkeys said, “Old and young together, only a thousand or so.”

千把 is a thousand-odd, a thousand give or take. The vagueness is the point: nobody has counted, because nobody expected to be able to.

Said the Great Sage, “In my day I had a host of forty-seven thousand fiends. Where have they all gone now?”

Here is the arithmetic that hurts. He left forty-seven thousand and has come back to a thousand-odd. 四萬七千 is the monkey-army of the novel's early chapters, quoted at its full strength so the gap does the work. 當時 takes dāng, in that time; 都 is dōu; 那裡 is nǎ, asking where.

The monkeys said, “After you left us, Grandfather, this mountain was set alight by the Bodhisattva Erlang, and better than half of us were burned to death. Those of us who crouched in the wells, or bored into the gorges, or hid beneath the iron-plank bridge, kept our lives.

The survivors are the ones who happened to be underground. Wells, gorges, the space beneath the bridge — shelter by accident, not by plan. 鐵板橋 is the iron-plank bridge behind the Water-Curtain Cave, the front door of the old kingdom. Note what they call Erlang: 菩薩, bodhisattva. He burned their home and they still speak of him with awe, which tells you how the powerful look from below. 藏 is cáng, hid; 得了 takes dé, got — got their lives, in the sense of keeping them.

But when the fire had died and the smoke cleared and we came out, there were no more flowers or fruit to keep us fed; we could barely stay alive, and half of what was left went off to other places. This half of us endured the hardship and stayed on the mountain — and these last two years the hunters have carried off half of us again.”

Count the halvings: 一半 three times in one sentence — the half who left for other places, the half who stayed and endured, and the half the hunters have carried off in the last two years. The burning took 大半, more than half, before any of that. 一半 takes 一 as yí, raised before the falling tone that follows. 難 is nán, hard; 山中 takes zhōng, in among.

“What do they carry you off to do?” asked the Pilgrim.

行者 takes xíng. 何幹 is gàn, to do — carry you off to do what? He has not guessed, and the answer is worse than anything he would have.

The monkeys said, “Speak of these hunters — how hateful they are! Those of us struck by their arrows and pierced by their spears, or poisoned and beaten dead, they carry off to flay and bone, to stew in soy and steam in vinegar, to fry in oil and roast with salt, and eat as a relish with their rice.

The answer is a kitchen. Flayed, boned, stewed in soy, steamed in vinegar, fried in oil, done with salt, and eaten as a side dish with rice — the horror is delivered entirely in the vocabulary of ordinary cooking. 中箭 and 中毒 take 中 as zhòng, struck by, not the zhōng that means middle. 著 is zháo, the reading for a blow that lands. 當做 is dàng, to treat as — not dāng.

And some who fall into the nets, or are caught in the snares, they take away alive — making them leap through hoops and put on shows, turn somersaults and stand on their heads, sift gongs and beat drums in the middle of the street, all manner of antics for men's amusement.”

And the ones taken alive are made into a circus act: hoops, somersaults, handstands, gongs and drums in the street. The monkeys are describing a trained-animal show, and the reader has watched their king do every one of those tricks by choice. 夾活兒 ends in the curled er suffix, alive. 觔斗 is the somersault, written with 觔 where the standard form has 筋 — 斗 is dǒu. 教 is jiào, to make someone do a thing. 當街 takes dāng, right in the street. 無所不為 — there is nothing they will not do — takes 為 as wéi, and the 不 in front of it keeps its falling tone, bù, because the syllable after it is rising.