Pilgrim, hearing the old master's scripture come to its end, reached into his ear, drew out the iron cudgel, waved it once in the wind — and it grew to a zhàng and two in length and a bowl's thickness — and pointed the staff once toward the sky.

聽得: 得 = de. 念盡: 盡 = jìn, to the end. 將棍: 將 = jiāng, taking hold of the staff to do something with it. 丈二: the measure 丈 (zhàng) stands as it is -- about ten feet, so the cudgel comes out at roughly twelve. 一幌 and 一指: 一 = yì before the third tones. He waits for the sutra to finish before he moves, which is a courtesy to his master and also good stagecraft.

Granny Wind, seeing it, hastily pulled open her leather bag;

那風婆婆: 那 = nà. 扯開皮袋 "tugged the leather sack open." The wind is kept in a bag, which is as concrete as mythology gets.

Xun the Second loosed the mouth-cord.

解放口繩 "loosed the cord that ties the sack's mouth."

One heard only the whoosh and roar of the wind, and through the whole city it tore off tiles and flipped bricks, flung up sand and sent the stones rolling.

聽得: 得 = de. 滿城中: 中 = zhōng. 揭瓦翻磚 "ripping off tiles and turning bricks over." 揚砂走石 "flinging up sand and rolling the stones along" -- still a live phrase in Chinese for a wind bad enough to keep you indoors.

To look at it, it was truly a fine wind — quite unlike your ordinary wind.

看起來: 看 = kàn. 那尋常之風: 那 = nà. 不同: the rising tone of 同 keeps 不 at bù.

Behold:

但見 "one saw only" -- the storyteller's cue that a set-piece of verse is starting. Whenever this novel is about to stop the action and describe something at length, some phrase of this kind announces it.

It snapped the willows and bruised the blossoms, crushed the groves and toppled the trees.

摧林倒樹: 倒 = dǎo, to fell or bring down.

In the ninefold hall it cracked the walls and breached the ramparts; at the Five-Phoenix Tower it rocked the beams and shook the pillars.

九重殿: 重 = chóng, layered -- the ninefold hall, not a heavy one. 搖梁撼柱 "rocking the beams and shaking the pillars."

At heaven's edge the red sun lost its light; on the ground below the yellow sand took wing.

天邊紅日無光 "at the sky's rim the red sun lost its light." 黃砂有翅 "the yellow sand had wings" -- the image of the whole passage, and worth pausing on: not sand blown about but sand that has grown wings.

Before the drill-hall the generals took fright; within the scholars' pavilion the civil officers quailed.

演武廳 the drill hall where the military train; 會文閣 the pavilion where the civil officials gather. 武將: 將 = jiàng here, a general -- the noun, not the helper word that takes hold of an object.

In the three palaces the painted ladies' black tresses were flung awry; in the six courts the concubines' jeweled coils came all undone.

粉黛 "powder and eyebrow-black," standing in for the women who wear them. 青絲 "black silk," meaning hair. 蓬寶髻 "the jewelled coil blown apart."

The marquises' and earls' gold crowns lost their broidered tassels; the ministers' black-gauze caps flapped their wings wide.

侯伯 marquises and earls. 金冠落繡纓: 落 = luò. 宰相: 相 = xiàng, a chief minister. 烏紗 is the black-gauze cap of office, whose two stiff side-flaps stand out sideways like wings -- so a minister in a gale looks as though his hat is trying to take off.

The officer of the day, though he had words, dared not speak them; the Yellow-Gate usher, memorial in hand, had no way to hand it up.

當駕: 當 = dāng, the officer on duty. 執本 "holding the memorial tablet." 無由遞 "no way to hand it up" -- government has stopped working, and the wind has stopped it.

Gold-fish pendants and jade belts kept no rank; ivory tablets and gauze robes fell out of all precedence.

金魚玉帶 gold fish-pendants and jade girdles, both badges of rank. 象簡 the ivory tablet an official carries at audience. 無品敘 "no ordering by grade." The point is not damage but disorder: nobody can tell who outranks whom any more.

The painted lofts and kingfisher screens were all battered and torn; the green casements and vermilion doors were every one in ruin.

彩閣翠屏 painted galleries and kingfisher-blue screens. 盡損傷: 盡 = jìn. 狼狽 (láng bèi) "in a sorry state" -- still one of the commonest words in Chinese for being comprehensively in a mess.

At the Hall of the Golden Chariot the tiles slid and the bricks flew; at the Brocade-Cloud Hall the doors hung askew and the lattices shattered.

金鑾殿 the throne hall; 錦雲堂 the Brocade-Cloud Hall. 門歪槅碎: 槅 (gé) is a latticed door panel.

This blast of wild wind was fierce indeed, blowing so that the king and his princes could scarcely meet;

刮得: 得 = de, linking the blowing to what it achieved. 那君王: 那 = nà. 難相會: 相 = xiāng, to meet one another -- and set that beside 宰相 five lines earlier, where the same character is xiàng and means a minister of state.

In the six streets and three markets not a footprint of a soul; the ten thousand doors and thousand gates were all shut fast.

六街三市 "the six streets and three markets," a stock way of saying the whole town. 沒人蹤: 沒 = méi. 萬戶千門 "ten thousand households."

Indeed, that was a wild wind raging.

那狂風: 那 = nà. 狂風大作 "a wild wind got up" -- the plain sentence that closes the set-piece and hands us back to the story.