The elder stepped forward, and had just reached the foot of the pagoda gate when he saw a speckled-bamboo curtain hung within. He strode through the door, lifted it, and pressed on inside — then suddenly raised his head and saw, upon a stone couch, a fiend lying asleep on its side. And how did it look? Behold:

He lifts a bamboo curtain and there is a monster asleep on a stone couch. Note that it is asleep: the danger is met at rest, and Tripitaka has walked all the way in before he sees it. 那長老 and 那石床 both take nà; 簾兒 ends in the curled er suffix; 側睡著 ends in the unstressed zhe, marking a state that is still going on — lying asleep, not having fallen asleep.

An indigo face, white tusks, a great gaping maw agape.

青靛臉, an indigo face; 白獠牙, white tusks. The portrait opens in short hard bursts, nothing like the flowing landscape that preceded it. The change of rhythm is the change of subject.

On either side the tangled, matted temple-hair, all as if dyed with rouge; three or four tufts of towering purple beard, so it seemed the sprouting shoots of the litchi.

And immediately the strangeness starts. The matted hair is described as if dyed with 胭脂, rouge — a cosmetic — and the purple beard as 荔枝排芽, litchi sprouting shoots. Monstrous material, delicate images. The rhapsody will keep doing this. 都 is dōu; 那 is nà.

A nose humped like a parrot's beak; eyes staring like the star of dawn.

鸚嘴, a parrot's beak, for the nose; 曙星, the star of dawn, for the eyes. Both 兒 here are the curled er suffix, which in Chinese makes a thing small and familiar — so the grotesque features are being given affectionate diminutives. That is a deliberately unsettling effect.

Two fists, the shape of a monk's alms-bowl; two blue feet, like gnarled stumps and splintered snags on a sheer cliff.

榾柮 is gǔ duò, chunks of stump-wood; 枒槎 is yā chá, jagged broken branches. Two words that both mean deadwood, stacked together, for a pair of feet. And the fists are the shape of a monk's alms-bowl — the object Tripitaka's disciple is out carrying at this very moment.

Slung aslant, a pale-yellow robe-mantle, outdoing a brocade-woven cassock.

淡黃袍, the pale yellow robe. This is the demon's name arriving before the demon has been named, worn like a costume: it outdoes a 織錦袈裟, a brocade-woven cassock — a monk's garment, on a thing that eats monks. 披著 ends in the unstressed zhe; 那 is nà.

The blade he held, keen light flashing bright; the stone he slept on, fine and smooth and flawless.

A blade in the hand, a flawless stone under the back. The instrument of killing and the comfort of the killer, set in the same couplet and given equal praise.

He too has marshaled his imps in ant-array; he too has sat, an old fiend, in wasp-court state.

蟻陣 and 蜂衙 — ants in battle order, bees at court. Chinese has long read insect swarms as tiny bureaucracies, and the demon's rank and retinue are being described through that lens. The phrase to watch is 他也曾, he too has once: it opens this line and comes back three more times.

See his awesome majesty, stern and cold; the whole host bellows, calling out “Sire!”

The whole host bellows and calls him Sire. He is not a lone monster; he is somebody's government.

He too has made, with the moon, a party of three to ladle wine from the pot; he too has felt wind rise beneath both arms as he tipped the tea-cup.

Two literary allusions in one couplet, and they are the giveaway. 月作三人 — making three of us with the moon — is Li Bai drinking alone under the moon and counting his shadow as company, one of the best-known poems in the language. 風生兩腋 — wind rising under both arms — is Lu Tong's tea song, where the seventh bowl lifts the drinker toward the immortals. This demon is being dressed as a cultivated poet, and the reader is meant to notice. 酌 takes zhuó, to pour.

See how vast his magic powers: in the blink of a lowered eye he roams the world's far edge.

霎著 ends in the unstressed zhe. In the blink of a lowered eye he crosses the world — the standard measure of real magical power in this book, and he has it.

In wild woods the birds cry loud; in deep thickets lodge the dragons and snakes.

宿 is sù, to lodge or harbour. 龍蛇, dragons and snakes, is the stock pairing for the great and dangerous things a wilderness hides.

Immortal maidens till the fields and grow white jade; Daoist adepts subdue the fire and nurture cinnabar.

伏火養丹砂 is alchemy: subduing the fire and nurturing cinnabar, the long slow process of refining the elixir of immortality. Immortal maidens farming white jade in the next breath. The demon's mountain is being given the furniture of a Daoist paradise it has no right to.

This little cave-mouth, though it reaches not to the Avichi hell; yet this staring, glaring fiend is very like an ox-headed yaksha.

And the closing couplet drops the whole pose. For all the poetry and the alchemy, the thing on the couch is a 牛頭夜叉 — an ox-headed yaksha, one of the jailer-demons who work the Buddhist hells. 阿鼻 is Avichi, the deepest hell of all, the one with no respite; the cave does not quite reach it, but the line makes sure you know which direction it lies in. 到不得 takes the unstressed de; 那 is nà.