The two, hand in hand and arm in arm, with all the little monkeys following after, climbed to the topmost peak of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.

In 相攙, supporting each other, the character 相 is xiāng; 概眾 is the whole company; 極巔 is the very summit. 那 is pointing nà.

A fine mountain! For since the Great Sage had come home, in these few days he had set it all to rights, restored to its old state and as good as new. Behold:

The lead-in to the chapter's grandest verse set-piece, and the detail that matters is in the prose: 收拾得復舊如新. He has spent his exile tidying up. 收拾得 takes the structural 得 as de; 復舊如新 is "restored to what it was, and as good as new." Both instances of 那 are pointing nà.

Green as if of carved kingfisher-jade, high as though brushing the clouds;

In 高似 the character 似 is sì. 削翠 is carved kingfisher-green and 摩雲 is brushing the clouds: colour first, then height.

all round it, tigers crouch and dragons coil; on every side, gibbons cry and cranes call.

虎踞龍蟠 — tigers crouching, dragons coiling — is a set phrase for a commanding, auspicious site, the sort of thing said of a good capital; 猿啼鶴唳, apes wailing and cranes crying, fills it with sound.

At dawn, clouds come to seal the peak; at dusk, one sees the sun hung in the woods.

Here 朝 is read zhāo, "dawn," paired against 暮, dusk — the only time in the whole chapter the character is read that way, against nine instances of the cháo that means "court." 暮觀 takes 觀 as guān; 林間 takes 間 as jiān.

The flowing streams, murmuring, chime like jade girdle-pendants; the gorge-springs, dripping, play like a jasper zither.

玉珮 is a jade girdle-pendant, the ornament that chimed as a gentleman walked; 瑤琴 is a jasper zither. The couplet turns running water into two kinds of music.

Before the mountain are cliffs and crags and sheer walls; behind it, flowers and trees in lush profusion.

峭壁 is a sheer cliff-face; 穠華 is lush blossoming. Rugged in front, flowering behind — the mountain gets a formal balance.

Above, it joins the Jade Maiden's washing-basin; below, it takes the branching waters of the River of Heaven.

玉女洗頭盆, the Jade Maiden's hair-washing basin, is a celestial pool; 天河 is the River of Heaven, which is to say the Milky Way; 分派水, branching waters, takes 分 as fēn. The mountain is now plumbed into the sky at both ends.

Heaven and Earth have knit their beauty here, outdoing Penglai; the pure and the turbid, refined, have bred a true grotto-heaven.

In 乾坤, Heaven and Earth, the character 乾 is qián — the name of the first trigram, pure Heaven. 蓬萊 is Penglai, the island of the immortals, the standard benchmark for paradise; 洞府 is a grotto-heaven, a Daoist paradise sited in a cave. A monkey's hillside has just been rated above Penglai.

The finest brush of the painter would be hard put to render it; an immortal's own inspiration could not trace it out.

In 仙子, an immortal being, the character 子 is zǐ; 天機 is celestial ingenuity, inspired craft; 描不就 is "cannot be sketched to completion." Saying a scene is beyond painting is one of the oldest moves in Chinese description, and it works by making the reader do the work.

Fantastic rocks all delicately wrought, and wrought rocks fantastic; a delicate splendor crowns the ridge and peak.

玲瓏, exquisite, finely wrought, is turned inside out across the line — wrought rocks, rocks wrought — so that the wordplay imitates the intricacy it is describing. 結綵 is wreathed in bright colours.

As the sunlight stirs, a thousand strands of purple glory;

A short line breaking the rhythm; 紫艷, purple splendour, starts the closing play of light.

as the auspicious vapors sway, ten thousand shafts of red cloud.

瑞氣 is auspicious vapour — the numinous haze that hangs over holy ground — and 紅霞 is red-glowing cloud. The paired short lines finish by bathing the peak in colour.

A grotto-heaven, a blessed land, here in the world of men — all over the mountain, new trees and new flowers.

洞天福地, "grotto-heaven and blessed land," is the standard Daoist term for a paradise located on this earth rather than above it; 人間有 is "here in the world of men." And the last thing the verse chooses to mention is the new growth — the trees and flowers Wukong has put in since he came home.