空中望城 Surveying the City from the Air
不多時，東方發白。行者又吩咐了八戒、沙僧，教他兩個：「不可攪擾僧人，出來亂走。待我成功之後，共汝等同行。」才別了，唿哨，一觔斗，跳在空中。睜火眼平西看處，果見有一座城池。你道怎麼就看見了？當時說那城池離寺只有四十里，故此憑高就望見了。行者近前仔細看處，又見那怪霧愁雲漠漠，妖風怨氣紛紛。行者在空中讚嘆道：不多时，东方发白。行者又吩咐了八戒、沙僧，教他两个：「不可搅扰僧人，出来乱走。待我成功之后，共汝等同行。」才别了，唿哨，一觔斗，跳在空中。睁火眼平西看处，果见有一座城池。你道怎么就看见了？当时说那城池离寺只有四十里，故此凭高就望见了。行者近前仔细看处，又见那怪雾愁云漠漠，妖风怨气纷纷。行者在空中赞叹道：
逐句解 Line by line
In a little while, the east grew white.
Dawn, in four characters. 東方發白 — the east turns white.
Pilgrim once more charged Bajie and Sha Seng, bidding the two of them: “Do not disturb the monks, nor go running about outside.
Housekeeping before the operation: keep the other two out of the way. 攪擾 is to disturb; 吩咐了 takes the completive le; 教他兩個 has 教 as jiào, the causative.
Wait till I have succeeded, and I will go on together with you all.”
同行 has 行 as xíng, to travel — the word that gives Wukong his own title, 行者, the one who walks.
Just then he took his leave, gave a whistle, and with one somersault sprang into the air.
The whistle and the somersault. 觔斗 here is the cloud-somersault that covers a hundred and eight thousand lǐ, though this morning he needs forty. 斗 is dǒu; 唿哨 is a whistle; 空中 takes the locative zhōng; 一觔斗 keeps 一 as yì.
Opening his fiery eyes and looking level toward the west, he did indeed see a walled city.
火眼 — the fire-eyes with golden pupils, burned into him in Laozi's furnace back in chapter 7, and the reason he can see what nobody else can. 一座 keeps 一 as yí.
You ask how he could see it just so?
The narrator turns to the reader and asks a question on their behalf — a storyteller's habit the novel never quite gives up. 怎麼就 is "how, just like that?"
In those days it was said the city lay but forty li from the temple, and so, from his height, he glimpsed it at once.
And answers it with arithmetic: forty lǐ, from that height. The distance was fixed by the ghost in the night audience and is repeated here exactly — the only two places the chapter states it. 當時 has 當 as dāng; 那城池 takes the pointing nà.
Pilgrim drew near and looked carefully, and again he saw that fiendish mist and mournful cloud lay thick, that a demon wind and rancorous vapor swirled.
What he sees is a diagnosis, not a view. 怪霧愁雲 and 妖風怨氣 — fiend-mist and grieving cloud, demon-wind and rancorous vapour — are the visible signature of a throne held wrongly. 漠漠 is spreading thick; 仔細 has 仔 as zǐ, carefully, not zǎi; 那怪霧 takes the pointing nà.
Pilgrim, up in the air, gave voice to praise:
讚嘆 is to sigh in wonder — and, as a narrative cue, the signal that verse is about to start. 空中 takes the locative zhōng.
If a true king mounts the throne of treasure, of itself there is auspicious light and five-colored cloud;
The first half of a four-line quatrain, and it states the chapter's cosmology as flatly as a rule: a rightful king on the throne produces 祥光, auspicious radiance, and five-coloured cloud. Weather is a readout of legitimacy. 寶座 is the throne.
only because a fiend has usurped the dragon-seat, roiling black vapors lock the golden gate.
And the second half applies the rule in reverse. 龍位 is the dragon-seat; 騰騰 is roiling upward; 鎖金門 has the black vapour locking the golden gate — the palace sealed by its own corruption.
The scene shifts to Wukong's reconnaissance, with the fine detail that his fire-eyes golden-pupils pick out a city forty lǐ off, and the narrator pausing to explain to the reader how that is possible. What he finds is not a capital at peace but one wrapped in fiend-mist and demon-wind.
The prose observation is then crystallised into a quatrain that states the underlying rule outright: a true king draws auspicious light and five-coloured cloud, a usurping fiend brings black vapour that locks the golden gate. In this cosmology the sky is a public record of whether the throne is rightfully held — and Wukong is the one character equipped to read it.