太子英姿 The Third Prince
逐句解 Line by line
His child's tufts barely cover his crown,
The portrait opens by dating him. 總角 are the twin top-knots a Chinese child wore, so fixed a marker of childhood that 總角之交 still means "friends since we were small"; 顖 (a variant of 囟, xìn) is the crown of the head. Heaven has sent a boy.
his draping hair not yet reaching his shoulders.
披毛 is loose hanging hair, not yet gathered up — a boy's hair reached the shoulders before it was bound. The first line dated him by his crown, this one by his hairline.
Marvelously quick and keen of mind,
神奇 and 敏悟 give the boy a mind, where the next line will give him a body. 敏悟 is not mere speed; it is quickness that arrives somewhere. And it is the first thing said about Nezha that is not about how young he looks.
his bones fine, his features clear and fair.
骨秀 and 清妍, fine-boned and clear-featured — the standard look of an immortal child, as recognisable to a Ming reader as a halo.
Truly a qilin-child of Heaven above,
麒麟子, a "qilin-child" (為 is wéi). The qilin appears at exceptional births, and Chinese still calls a brilliant boy a 麒麟兒.
indeed a rosy-mist phoenix immortal.
煙霞 is the mist and rose-coloured cloud where an immortal lives, and 彩鳳 is the coloured phoenix. Both are habitat rather than person: the boy is identified by where a creature like him would be found.
Of dragon stock, his nature no common cast,
龍種, "of dragon stock" (種 is zhǒng), and 非俗相, "no common cast of face" — 相 as xiàng, the look a face-reader would judge you by.
in tender years plainly unlike the dust-bound world.
不類塵凡, "unlike the dust-bound world." In 不類 the 不 takes bú before the falling tone of 類.
On his body he bears six kinds of divine arms,
六般神器械, Nezha's six divine weapons — the arsenal that makes him a god rather than a child, and which the battle poem will shortly itemise one by one.
his soaring and shape-shifting boundlessly wide.
化 is again huà. 廣無邊 closes the portrait on sheer extent, having opened it on a child's top-knots: nine lines travel from the smallest physical detail to the largest claim available.
Now he has received the Jade Emperor's golden-mouthed decree,
金口詔, the "golden-mouthed decree" — words from the Jade Emperor's own mouth, the highest authorisation there is. Wukong, by contrast, wrote his own title on a flag.
commissioned of the Sea Assembly, titled of the Three Altars.
敕封海會號三壇 names his titles at the close, the 三壇海會大神 conferred a few passages back when the expedition was commissioned. 敕 (chì) is an imperial investiture.
Nezha's portrait is the formal answer to Wukong's a few passages earlier, and the contrast is pointed. Where the Monkey King was armoured magnificence undercut by a beast's snout, the boy-general is nothing but auspicious pedigree: 總角 top-knots and unbound hair, qilin-child and phoenix-immortal, 龍種 of dragon stock, fine-boned and fair. Every line says what Heaven counts as legitimate — a being whose rank is written into his face and confirmed by the Jade Emperor's 金口詔.
That legitimacy is the whole reason for the pairing. Nezha holds his authority by birth and investiture, titled 三壇海會大神 before he has struck a blow; Wukong is reaching for a title he had to write out himself. The novel sets the sanctioned boy-god against the self-styled 齊天大聖 not to predict the outcome — any reader can already guess Nezha will fare no better than 巨靈 — but to sharpen the question the chapter keeps asking: what makes a name real? The next passage tests whether celestial pedigree, armed with six divine weapons, can do what a menial office could not.