螃蟹模樣 The Crab-Shaped Ghost
公主道：「和尚啊，你莫要尋死。昨者你兩個師弟那樣好漢，也不曾打得過我黃袍郎。你這般一個觔多骨少的瘦鬼，一似個螃蟹模樣，骨頭都長在外面，有甚本事，你敢說拿妖魔之話？」公主道：「和尚啊，你莫要寻死。昨者你两个师弟那样好汉，也不曾打得过我黄袍郎。你这般一个觔多骨少的瘦鬼，一似个螃蟹模样，骨头都长在外面，有甚本事，你敢说拿妖魔之话？」
逐句解 Line by line
The princess said, "Monk, do not go seeking your death.
尋死, xún sǐ, to go looking for death, to throw your life away. She is not mocking yet; she thinks she is warning him.
Only yesterday your two brothers, stout fellows as they are, could not for all that prevail over my lord Yellow Robe.
好漢, hǎo hàn, a stout fellow, a man of mettle — and she has good evidence, having watched both of them lose. 打得過, dǎ de guò, to be able to beat.
A scrawny wretch like you, all sinew and little bone, for all the world like a crab with its bones grown on the outside — what powers have you, that you dare talk of taking fiends?"
Now the mockery, and it produces the best image in the chapter. 觔多骨少, jīn duō gǔ shǎo, much sinew and little bone — 觔 again the variant of 筋. Then 螃蟹模樣, páng xiè mú yàng, "the shape of a crab," with the bones grown on the outside. A skinny, hard-shelled, wrong-way-round creature: it is a very precise piece of rudeness.
The princess's scorn gives the chapter one of its most vivid comic images: the Great Sage as a scrawny, sinew-heavy wretch, a crab with its bones worn on the outside. The mockery is dramatically pointed rather than gratuitous — she has just watched his two formidable brothers routed by Yellow Robe, and cannot credit that so slight a figure will succeed where they failed.
The taunt does the familiar work of setting up a riposte, and the mismatch between Wukong's unimpressive body and his enormous power is a standing joke of the novel, exploited again and again. That the mockery comes from the very person he has undertaken to rescue sharpens its edge, and readies the proverb-capped answer of the next passage, in which he meets appearance with the wisdom of the marketplace.