詐誘寶貝 Whence Come You?
那怪道:「我雖見你眼熟,一時間卻想不起姓名,你果是誰?從那裡來的?你把我渾家估倒在何處,卻來我家詐誘我的寶貝?著實無禮,可惡!」行者道:「你是也不認得我。我是唐僧的大徒弟,叫做孫悟空行者。我是你五百年前的舊祖宗哩。」那怪道:「我虽见你眼熟,一时间却想不起姓名,你果是谁?从那里来的?你把我浑家估倒在何处,却来我家诈诱我的宝贝?着实无礼,可恶!」行者道:「你是也不认得我。我是唐僧的大徒弟,叫做孙悟空行者。我是你五百年前的旧祖宗哩。」
逐句解 Line by line
The fiend said, "Though your face is familiar, for the moment I cannot call your name to mind. Who are you in truth?
眼熟, yǎn shú, "familiar to the eye" — the exact Chinese for the maddening sensation of knowing a face and not the name. 一時間, yì shí jiān, for the moment.
And whence do you come?
那裡, nǎ lǐ: whence, from where — the questioning one.
Where have you laid my wife low, that you come thus to my house to wheedle away my treasure by fraud?
The accusation is, comically, entirely accurate. 估倒, gū dǎo, to knock down and make away with; 詐誘, zhà yòu, to wheedle a thing out of somebody by fraud. He has hidden the wife and conned the treasure, and the demon has just described both correctly without knowing whom he is describing.
It is downright insolence — detestable!"
著實, zhuó shí, downright, thoroughly — here 著 is zhuó again. 可惡, kě wù, detestable, with 惡 read wù, "to hate," not è, "evil."
Pilgrim said, "So you do not know me after all.
認得, rèn de: to recognise, to place someone.
I am the Tang Monk's chief disciple, called Sun Wukong the Pilgrim.
He gives the full formal name and title, which is what one does before a fight. 大徒弟, dà tú dì, eldest disciple.
I am that old ancestor of yours from five hundred years ago."
五百年前, wǔ bǎi nián qián, five hundred years ago — the era of the uproar in Heaven, and the date every demon in this book is expected to know. 舊祖宗, jiù zǔ zōng, "your old ancestor," is the mocking claim of precedence again. It is bravado, and it also happens to be true, as the last third of the chapter will show.
The demon's questions — who Wukong is, where he has come from, what has become of the princess — register a real bewilderment, and his charge of fraud is comically just: Wukong has indeed hidden the wife and wheedled away the treasure. The exchange lets the adversary state the truth of the trick while entirely failing to identify its author.
The self-identification, capped by the mock claim to be the demon's ancestor from five hundred years back, ties this confrontation to the novel's grand backstory and asserts a cosmic seniority over all lesser fiends. The boast is comic bravado and a real claim of rank at once, and it provokes the incredulous denial that opens the next passage.