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百花羞
The Princess Reveals Herself
長老聞言，淚眼偷看，那婦人約有三十年紀。遂道：「女菩薩，不消問了。我已是該死的，走進你家門來也，要吃就吃了罷，又問怎的？」那婦人道：「我不是吃人的。我家離此西下有三百餘里，那裡有座城，叫做寶象國。我是那國王的第三個公主，乳名叫做百花羞。只因十三年前八月十五日夜，玩月中間，被這妖魔一陣狂風攝將來，與他做了十三年夫妻，在此生兒育女，杳無音信回朝。思量我那父母，不能相見。你從何來，被他拿住？」长老闻言，泪眼偷看，那妇人约有三十年纪。遂道：「女菩萨，不消问了。我已是该死的，走进你家门来也，要吃就吃了罢，又问怎的？」那妇人道：「我不是吃人的。我家离此西下有三百余里，那里有座城，叫做宝象国。我是那国王的第三个公主，乳名叫做百花羞。只因十三年前八月十五日夜，玩月中间，被这妖魔一阵狂风摄将来，与他做了十三年夫妻，在此生儿育女，杳无音信回朝。思量我那父母，不能相见。你从何来，被他拿住？」
逐句解 Line by line
長老聞言，淚眼偷看，那婦人約有三十年紀。遂道：「女菩薩，不消問了。我已是該死的，走進你家門來也，要吃就吃了罷，又問怎的？」
长老闻言，泪眼偷看，那妇人约有三十年纪。遂道：「女菩萨，不消问了。我已是该死的，走进你家门来也，要吃就吃了罢，又问怎的？」
Hearing her, the elder stole a glance through his tear-filled eyes: the woman seemed some thirty years of age. Then he said, 'Bodhisattva-lady, there is no need to ask. I am already a dead man; having walked in at your household's door, if you would eat me, then eat and be done — why ask further?'
女菩薩 ("female bodhisattva") is a courteous form of address to a laywoman, freighted here with irony given the setting. Taking her for the ogre's kin, Tripitaka meets her question with fatalistic resignation: 該死 = "doomed, deserving to die." The colloquial 要吃就吃了罷...又問怎的 sharpens the pathos with plainness of speech.
那婦人道：「我不是吃人的。我家離此西下有三百餘里，那裡有座城，叫做寶象國。我是那國王的第三個公主，乳名叫做百花羞。只因十三年前八月十五日夜，玩月中間，被這妖魔一陣狂風攝將來，與他做了十三年夫妻，在此生兒育女，杳無音信回朝。思量我那父母，不能相見。你從何來，被他拿住？」
那妇人道：「我不是吃人的。我家离此西下有三百余里，那里有座城，叫做宝象国。我是那国王的第三个公主，乳名叫做百花羞。只因十三年前八月十五日夜，玩月中间，被这妖魔一阵狂风摄将来，与他做了十三年夫妻，在此生儿育女，杳无音信回朝。思量我那父母，不能相见。你从何来，被他拿住？」
Said the woman: 'I am no eater of men. My home lies three hundred li and more to the west of here, where there stands a city called the Land of Precious Images. I am that king's third princess; my milk-name is Hundred-Flowers-Shy. Thirteen years ago, on the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month, in the very midst of the moon-gazing, this fiend snatched me away on a gust of wild wind; I have been his wife these thirteen years, have borne him sons and daughters here, and no word of me has ever gone back to court. When I think of my father and mother, whom I cannot see — And you, whence come you, that he has taken you captive?'
The recognition turns on her self-identification: 寶象國 ("the Land of Precious Images") and the princess 百花羞 ("Hundred-Flowers-Shy," given as a 乳名, a milk- or nursery-name). The abduction is precisely dated to the Mid-Autumn festival (八月十五, 玩月) — demonic violence breaking in upon the most domestic of lunar rites; 攝將來 uses 將 as the coverb of carrying-off, and 杳無音信 = "no trace, no tidings." 生兒育女 takes 兒 as the noun ér (sons); 不能相見, 相 the reciprocal xiāng. Her broken final question returns the exchange to Tripitaka.
總評 Commentary
This is the chapter's recognition scene, and it is built on a double irony. Tripitaka, certain he has stumbled into an ogre's larder, offers himself for the pot with a resignation that is at once pious and comically abject; the woman he addresses as 女菩薩 turns out to be no demon at all but a fellow prisoner, and a princess. Her calm disclaimer — 我不是吃人的 — punctures his fatalism and reorients the whole encounter from doom to alliance.
The princess 百花羞 is one of the novel's captive royal women, and her brief autobiography is exact in its cruelty: seized on the night of the Mid-Autumn moon-viewing thirteen years before, made a demon's wife, mother to demon children, cut off from court and kin. The choice of the eighth-month full moon — the festival of family reunion — as the moment of her abduction gives her loss its particular edge. That she has 生兒育女 by the ogre complicates the sentiment: she is bound to Baoxiang by blood and to the cave by other blood, and it is from this doubled captivity that the letter she is about to write seeks release.