山景賦 A Rhapsody on the Mountain Prospect
好大聖，橫擔了鐵棒，領定了唐僧，剖開山路，一直前進。那師父在馬上遙觀，好一座山景。真個是：好大圣，横担了铁棒，领定了唐僧，剖开山路，一直前进。那师父在马上遥观，好一座山景。真个是：
逐句解 Line by line
Now the Great Sage laid the iron rod crosswise on his shoulder, took the Tang Monk firmly in charge, opened a path through the hills, and pressed straight on.
橫擔 (héng dān) "to shoulder crosswise," with 擔 in its verbal ‘carry’ sense. 好大聖 ("Now the Great Sage —") is a stock storyteller's phrase launching a burst of action.
From his horse the master gazed into the distance — what a mountain prospect it was!
遙觀 (yáo guān) "to gaze afar." The set exclamation 好一座 ("what a ——!") cues the descriptive set-piece to follow.
Truly it was:
真個是 ("truly it was") is the conventional tag opening an embedded descriptive verse — here a 賦, a rhapsody.
Peaks jagged and sheer brush the Dipper's handle; / treetops seem almost to touch the clouds of heaven.
嵯峨 (cuó é) "craggy, towering." 斗柄 (dǒu bǐng) is the ‘handle’ of the Northern Dipper, with 斗 read dǒu. 雲霄 (yún xiāo) the high heavens.
Amid banked blue mist, now and then one hears gibbons wailing at the valley's mouth;
聞得 (wénde) "to hear," with 得 as a resultative complement. Gibbon-cries are a stock note of wild desolation in Chinese landscape verse.
in the shade of tangled green, ever one catches cranes crying among the pines.
亂翠 (luàn cuì) "tangled kingfisher-green," i.e. dense foliage; 中 read zhōng ("amid"); 聽得 (tīngde) "to hear." The crane's cry (鶴唳) carries Daoist and reclusive overtones.
Wind-shrieking mountain-sprites stand by the stream, teasing the woodcutter;
山魅 (shān mèi) mountain goblins or sprites; 樵夫 (qiáo fū) the woodcutter — the familiar human figure who strays into the numinous wild.
seasoned fox-spirits sit on the cliff's edge, startling the hunter.
成器狐狸 foxes ‘come into their powers,’ old enough to work magic; 獵戶 (liè hù) the hunter. Sprite and beast alike unsettle the ordinary folk of the hills.
A fine mountain!
An interjection of praise breaking into the description — a mark of the spoken-storyteller manner even inside a written rhapsody.
See how on all eight sides the crags loom high, and on every quarter the slopes are sheer.
八面 / 四圍 "the eight faces / the four surrounds" — an all-around sweep; 崖巍 (yá wēi) towering cliffs; 那 read nà.
Gnarled and ancient pines coil their kingfisher canopies; withered, broken old trees hang with vine and creeper.
喬松 (qiáo sōng) tall pines; 翠蓋 "kingfisher canopy," the green crown of a tree likened to a carriage-parasol; 藤蘿 (téng luó) climbing vines.
Spring-waters fly and pour; a cold vapour pierces one through, chilling the very hair;
飛流 (fēi liú) "flying and flowing," of a cascade; 毛髮 "hair," with 髮 read fà.
the summits stand towering and sheer; a clear wind stings the eyes and startles the dreaming soul.
屹𡶧 is the binome 屹立 (yì lì), "to stand towering," written here with the rare astral graph 𡶧 (U+21DA7) — a 山-radical form built on the phonetic 立, hence read lì, matching its Basic-plane twin 岦 (⿱山立). The 世德堂本 favours such decorative mountain-graphs in its rhapsodies. 射眼 (shè yǎn) "to stab at the eyes," of a piercing light or wind.
At times one hears the great beast roar; ever one hears the mountain birds calling in their season.
大蟲 (dà chóng) — literally ‘the great insect,’ the old vernacular word for a tiger; 哮吼 (xiāo hǒu) "to roar."
River-deer and stags in herds thread the thorn-brakes, bounding to and fro;
麂 (jǐ) the muntjac or river-deer; 荊棘 (jīng jí) thorns and brambles.
roe-deer and wild sows band together to forage, scampering before and behind.
獐 (zhāng) the roe-deer; 𤜱 (U+24731), read bā, is a wild sow (a variant of 豝). 結黨 "to band together." Both graphs recur from the bestiary of chapter 3.
Stand awhile on the grassy slope — as far as the eye reaches, not a single traveller;
佇立 (zhù lì) "to stand a long while"; 一望 (yí wàng) "at one glance, as far as one can see."
walk on into the deep hollows — on every side there are jackals and wolves.
深凹 (shēn āo) a deep depression or ravine; 豺狼 (chái láng) jackals and wolves, standard emblems of a lawless, dangerous wild.
Surely this is no place where the Buddha-patriarch cultivates the Way — it is all a haunt of flying birds and running beasts.
應非 (yīng fēi) "surely it is not"; 佛祖 (fó zǔ) the Buddha-patriarch; 盡是 (jìn shì) "it is entirely," 盡 in its invariant reading jìn. The couplet closes the rhapsody by turning the wild landscape into a spiritual verdict — no sanctuary, only savagery.
The mountain rhapsody (賦) is one of the novel's signature set-pieces. These descriptive interludes do not advance the plot so much as slow it, building atmosphere and marking the party's crossing into a wild, numinous zone. Wú's mountain is a catalogue of the standard sublime — jagged peaks brushing the Dipper, cascades, gibbons and cranes, sprites teasing woodcutters, foxes ‘come into their powers,’ tigers, deer, jackals and wolves — assembled into parallel couplets with internal rhyme, a portrait of a place at once beautiful and menacing.
The closing couplet gives the whole description its point: surely this is no place where the Buddha cultivates the Way, only a haunt of birds and beasts. The wild is defined by what it lacks, a sanctuary — and that lack sets up the irony to come, for the pilgrims are about to find, in the midst of this wilderness, a great and prosperous monastery whose abbot proves less hospitable than the beasts. A textual note: the 世德堂本 writes ‘towering’ with the rare astral graph 𡶧, a decorative mountain-form of 立 (lì) — one of the codepoint-exact readings this edition preserves and which standard modern texts quietly normalise away.