回前詞 Prefatory Lyric
話說唐僧復得了孫行者，師徒們一心同體，共詣西方。自寶象國救了公主，承君臣送出城西。說不盡沿路饑餐渴飲，夜住曉行。卻又值三春景候，那時節：话说唐僧复得了孙行者，师徒们一心同体，共诣西方。自宝象国救了公主，承君臣送出城西。说不尽沿路饥餐渴饮，夜住晓行。却又值三春景候，那时节：
逐句解 Line by line
The tale tells how the Tang Monk, having regained Pilgrim Sun, master and disciples now of one heart and one body, pressed on together toward the West.
The chapter picks the story up where the last one dropped it: the Tang Monk has his eldest disciple back. 復得 is fù dé, "to get back, to recover" — 得 read dé, and 行者 read xíng. The band is now 一心同體, "one heart, one body," a phrase the novel uses for the pilgrims as the faculties of a single person working in concert again.
Since delivering the princess of the Precious-Image Kingdom, they had been escorted by its lord and ministers out past the western wall of the city.
A one-line recap of the episode just finished. 寶象國 is Bǎoxiàng guó, the Precious-Image Kingdom, whose princess the pilgrims had rescued.
There is no telling all the hunger they ate through and thirst they drank down along the road, lodging by night and setting out at dawn.
The storyteller's way of skipping the boring months. 說不盡, shuō bú jìn, "more than can be told" — 盡 is jìn, and 不 lifts to bú in front of it.
It fell, moreover, in the season of the three spring months — and at that very time:
Time to set the scene. 三春, sān chūn, is "the three months of spring," here the last of them. In 那時節 the 那 is pointing rather than asking, so nà. The colon is the cue: a poem is coming.
A light wind combs the willows, green as floss of silk; / such fair scenery is most fit to be sung.
The lyric opens on willows. 綠如絲, lǜ rú sī, "green as floss-silk," of new willow-withies; 堪題, "worth writing a poem about" — which is exactly what the poet is doing.
The hour hastens the birdsong; warmth coaxes the blossoms open; over all the ground the fragrance spreads.
芳菲, fāng fēi, "scented and thick with growth," the standard two-word tag for spring in full spate.
To the crab-apple courtyard come a pair of swallows — this is the very time to delight in spring.
海棠, hǎi táng, is the flowering crab-apple, a courtyard tree. 賞春 is "to take your pleasure in spring" — the same 賞 that turns up in 賞花, going out to look at the blossom, still a fixed item on the Chinese calendar.
Red dust upon the purple lanes; damask silks, strings and pipes; the grass-battle played, the wine-cup passed around.
Three quick brushstrokes of a spring festival. 鬥草, dòu cǎo, the "grass-battle," was a seasonal game — players matched plucked stems against each other, part botany contest and part tug-of-war. 傳卮, chuán zhī, is passing the wine-cup round the circle. The text writes 絃 for the strings, the older written form of 弦, read xián either way.
Chapter 32 opens by tying off the previous thread. Pilgrim Sun, thrown out by his master and coaxed back again over the chapters just past, is with the band once more, and the four of them are 一心同體 — "one heart, one body." The phrase is doing quiet doctrinal work: in this novel the four pilgrims are also four parts of one person, so a reconciliation is not just a plot repair but a mind pulling itself back together. The narrator then waves away the months of travel with the stock formula about eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping at night and starting at dawn (饑餐渴飲，夜住曉行) — the equivalent of a montage.
Then comes a 詞, a lyric in irregular lines, and it is all willows, birdsong, swallows nesting in a crab-apple courtyard, grass-games and a wine-cup going round. Nothing could be less ominous, which is the point. The novel likes to put its prettiest weather immediately before its worst trouble, and this particular patch of late spring sits on the doorstep of Level-Top Mountain, where Zhu Bajie is going to have the worst day of his career.