Sha Monk laughed and said: "Brother, the old saying goes: 'Three years without darkening the door, and kin are kin no longer.'

Sha Monk, who is usually the quiet one, punctures the whole argument with a proverb — and the proverb is still current. 三年不上門，當親也不親: let three years pass without visiting and the relationship lapses, whatever the blood. Note the printer encloses it in the inner quotation marks the edition reserves for quoted matter, which is why it is set as prose here rather than as verse. The two instances of 不 behave differently and correctly: bú before the falling tone of 上, plain bù before the level tone of 親.

You have been parted from him five or six hundred years, you have never once exchanged a cup of wine with him, nor sent a festival gift to invite him — how should he acknowledge any kinship with you?"

Sha Monk is doing arithmetic on the friendship and finding nothing in the ledger. Two readings here are worth flagging. In 往還, "to have dealings, to come and go," the second character is the verb "to go back," huán — not the hái meaning "still" that this chapter has used a dozen times. And 他那裡 is the questioning 那, nǎ: not "over there" but "how on earth would he." Both 相 are the mutual one, xiāng. 節禮 are the gifts exchanged at the calendar festivals — the machinery by which a Chinese relationship was kept alive, and exactly what Wukong has not done.

Pilgrim said: "How can you take the measure of a man like that?

A real crux, and the dictionary settles it. 量 splits by tone according to the job it is doing: level-tone liáng for the verb, to weigh or measure or gauge, and falling-tone liàng for the noun, a capacity or a quantity. The 康熙字典 states the division outright — one reads 度量 and 器量, capacity and magnanimity, as liàng, but 丈量 and 商量, surveying and deliberating, as liáng. Here 量人 is plainly the verb, to take a man's measure, so it is liáng — the same reading this chapter already gives it in 思量 and 商量. Worth adding that 量人 occurs exactly once in the whole novel, and this is it.

The old saying goes: 'A single duckweed leaf comes home to the sea; and living as men, where shall we not meet again?'

Wukong answers a proverb with a proverb, and his is the more famous. 一葉浮萍歸大海，為人何處不相逢 — the duckweed drifts wherever the water takes it and still ends in the sea, so people who have once known each other will cross paths again. It is worth noticing that this is a seven-and-seven couplet, verse by any scansion; but the edition prints it inside quotation marks, and by the printer's own test quoted matter is prose however it scans, so it carries no verse marking. 為人 takes 為 as wéi, "being a person"; 相逢 has the mutual 相, xiāng.

Even if he does not own the kinship, he surely will not harm my Master.

The argument quietly retreats from "he owes me" to "he probably will not." 好道 is a Ming turn of phrase for "surely, presumably" — and the hedge in it is the tell.

I do not look to be kept to a banquet — but he is bound at least to give me back a Tang Monk in one piece."

The joke that closes the chapter's talk, and it is a good one: no need to lay on dinner, just return the Master undamaged. 囫圇 means "whole, entire, in one piece," and applying it to a person is deliberately comic — the word one would use of a swallowed dumpling. 還我 has 還 as huán, the verb "to give back," the second time in this passage that this character is a verb rather than the "still" word it has been all chapter. 相留 carries the mutual 相, xiāng.