強顏相認 A Forced Glad Face
這太子下馬，跪於亭下，叫：「母親。」那娘娘強整歡容，叫聲：「孩兒，喜呀！喜呀！這二三年在前殿與你父王開講，不得相見，我甚思量。今日如何得暇來看我一面？誠萬千之喜！誠萬千之喜！孩兒，你怎麼聲音悲慘？你父王年紀高邁，有一日龍歸碧海，鳳返丹霄，你就傳了帝位，還有甚麼不悅？」这太子下马，跪于亭下，叫：「母亲。」那娘娘强整欢容，叫声：「孩儿，喜呀！喜呀！这二三年在前殿与你父王开讲，不得相见，我甚思量。今日如何得暇来看我一面？诚万千之喜！诚万千之喜！孩儿，你怎么声音悲惨？你父王年纪高迈，有一日龙归碧海，凤返丹霄，你就传了帝位，还有甚么不悦？」
逐句解 Line by line
The prince dismounted, knelt below the pavilion, and called out: 'Mother.'
The prince kneels and addresses the queen as 母親. 太子 keeps 子 = zǐ.
The lady, forcing her features into a look of gladness, cried out: 'My child — what joy!'
強整歡容: forcing a cheerful expression over her grief (強 = qiǎng, 'to compel oneself'). 孩兒 ('my child') takes 兒 = ér (the noun-morpheme, as in 女兒/嬰兒), not the erhua suffix; 那 = nà.
What joy indeed!'
The doubled 喜呀！ conveys the queen's effortful, almost desperate display of gladness.
'These two or three years you have been in the front hall at your father's discourses, so that we could not meet — how I have longed for you.'
開講: to hold forth on the classics — the impostor's pretext for keeping the prince sequestered, away from his mother. 不得 takes 得 = dé; 相見 keeps 相 = xiāng (mutual); 甚思量 has 甚 = shèn ('greatly').
'How is it that today you have found the leisure to come and look upon my face?'
得暇: to find a free moment; 得 = dé.
'Truly a joy ten-thousand-fold!'
誠萬千之喜: 'a joy of ten-thousand-thousands,' a stock courtly hyperbole of delight.
'A joy ten-thousand-fold indeed!'
The repeated exclamation heightens the queen's forced effusiveness, masking her sorrow.
'My child, why is your voice so full of grief?'
孩兒 again takes 兒 = ér; the queen catches the mourning in her son's tone.
'Your father-king is well on in years; the day the dragon returns to the emerald sea and the phoenix goes back to the cinnabar sky, you will inherit the throne — so what is there yet to be unhappy about?'
龍歸碧海，鳳返丹霄: euphemisms for the king's death (the imperial dragon and phoenix departing the world). 還 = hái ('yet'); 甚麼 = shén me ('what').
The reunion is staged as a small theatre of concealment. The queen 'forces' (強整) a glad face; her hyperbolic 誠萬千之喜, doubled like the doubled 喜呀, rings with the strain of a grief she cannot yet name. Her warmth is genuine and false at once — truly glad to see her son, truly bereft of her husband.
The cover story surfaces naturally: the prince has been kept 'at his father's discourses' in the front hall (開講), the pretext by which the impostor has isolated mother from son for two or three years. Her euphemisms for the king's death — 龍歸碧海，鳳返丹霄 — are spoken of the living 'father' she believes still reigns, a dramatic irony the reader, who knows the true king lies drowned, feels keenly.
The queen's closing question — what is there to be unhappy about? — invites the prince's counter-question and turns the scene toward interrogation. The chapter title promised an infant who 'questions his mother'; here the questioning begins.