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 gets off his horse, kneels below the pavilion, and calls her 母親 — mother, plainly. 太子 keeps 子 at zǐ.
The lady, forcing her features into a look of gladness, cried out: 'My child — what joy!'
She has been weeping a moment ago and now has to perform delight, which is what 強整歡容 catches: 強 read qiǎng, to force oneself, and a cheerful face pulled straight over grief. 孩兒, 'my child,' takes 兒 as ér — the character carrying its own weight as a word, as it does in 女兒 and 嬰兒 — and not the light er ending. 那 is nà.
What joy indeed!'
喜呀！ twice over. The repetition is the sound of someone trying too hard to seem glad.
'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 means to hold forth on the classics, and it is the impostor's alibi: the boy has been kept in the front hall at his father's lectures for two or three years, which is a tidy way of keeping him away from his mother. 不得 takes 得 as dé. 相見 keeps 相 at xiāng, 'each other.' And 甚 in 甚思量 is shèn, 'greatly' — how much she has missed him.
'How is it that today you have found the leisure to come and look upon my face?'
得暇 is to find a free moment, with 得 as dé.
'Truly a joy ten-thousand-fold!'
誠萬千之喜 — 'truly a joy of ten thousand thousands.' Court language ran to this kind of numerical extravagance the way a formal letter today runs to 'I trust this finds you well.'
'A joy ten-thousand-fold indeed!'
Said again, immediately. The doubling is the strain showing through the courtesy.
'My child, why is your voice so full of grief?'
She hears it before he tells her. 孩兒 again takes 兒 as ér.
'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 — 'the dragon returns to the emerald sea, the phoenix goes back to the cinnabar sky.' Both are polite ways of saying a sovereign has died; the dragon and the phoenix are the emperor and empress, going home. The dramatic irony is exquisite, because she is using a euphemism for a death that has already happened, about a man she believes is still alive. 還 is hái, 'yet.' 甚麼 reads shén me, 'what.'
The reunion is staged as a small theater of concealment. The queen 'forces' (強整) a glad face; her 誠萬千之喜, doubled like the doubled 喜呀, rings with the effort of a grief she cannot yet name. Her warmth is real and false at the same time — she is genuinely glad to see her son and genuinely bereft of her husband.
The cover story surfaces without anyone having to explain it. The boy has been kept 'at his father's discourses' in the front hall, 開講, which is how the impostor has kept mother and son apart for two or three years. Then she reaches for the standard euphemisms for a king's death — 龍歸碧海，鳳返丹霄 — and applies them to a man she thinks is alive and well, while the reader, who knows he is at the bottom of a well, winces.
Her closing question, what is there to be unhappy about, hands the prince his opening. The chapter's title promised a child who questions his mother; the questioning starts here.