Tripitaka, hearing this, could not stanch the tears at his cheeks: "This is just what the ancients meant: 'The yellow plum falls not, the green plum falls; Heaven wrongs of all men the sonless most.'"

Tripitaka weeps, and reaches for a proverb: 黃梅不落青梅落，老天偏害沒兒人. The yellow plum is ripe and ready to drop; the green one is not. Fate takes the green. And 老天偏害 — heaven goes out of its way — puts the blame squarely: of all people it could pick on, it picks the childless. 沒兒人 takes 兒 as ér, son. 藏 in 三藏 is zàng.

Pilgrim laughed: "Let me question him further.

行者笑道 — Wukong *laughs*, one line after that. It is not callousness. He has stopped listening for sorrow and started listening for a way out, and the questions that follow are him looking for one.

Old sir, how large is your household's estate?"

家當 is what a household is worth, goods and land together. An odd question to ask a weeping man, and it has a purpose.

The two elders said: "We have a fair bit: forty or fifty qǐng of paddy-field, sixty or seventy of dry field, eighty or ninety plots of grazing-ground;

The inventory, and it is enormous. 水田 is irrigated paddy, 旱田 unirrigated field, 草場 grazing ground — and 場 is chǎng here, a real place you could walk across, against the cháng it takes in 道場, a rite. A qǐng is a hundred of the smaller land unit English borrowed as *mu*, so forty or fifty of them is a great estate by any Ming reckoning. In 些兒 the 兒 is the little -r ending, er, not the ér that stands on its own meaning child. And note the modesty of the phrase it hangs on: 頗有些兒, "we have a fair bit."

two or three hundred head of water-buffalo and ox, twenty or thirty donkeys and horses, and pigs, sheep, fowl, and geese past counting.

Two or three hundred head of cattle, twenty or thirty donkeys and horses, and poultry 無數, past counting — 數 read shù. Every figure is given as a range, which is how a man talks about property he has never had to count.

At home too we have old grain we cannot eat through, and clothes we cannot wear out.

吃不著的陳糧 is old grain they cannot eat their way through — 著 read zháo, the reading for reaching or attaining a thing, and because zháo rises, the 不 before it stays bù. 穿不了的衣服, clothes they cannot wear out, takes 了 as liǎo. Grain going stale and cloth going unworn: the picture is not luxury but surplus with nobody to leave it to.

Our wealth and holdings, too, can all be reckoned."

盡得數 takes 得 as dé and 數 as shù — it can all be reckoned up. Which is exactly the point Wukong is about to make, and exactly the point they are about to demolish.

Pilgrim said: "With an estate like this, you have done well to save it up.

虧你省將起來的 — you have done well to save it up, 將 read jiāng. It sounds like a compliment. It is bait.

The old man said: "How do you see me as thrifty?"

怎見我省: how do you make me out to be thrifty? The old man walks into it.

Pilgrim said: "Having such means, how can you bear to sacrifice your own flesh-and-blood children?

And the hook: 捨得, to be able to bring yourself to give a thing up — 得 read de, linking the verb to whether it can be done. Wukong is calling them stingy with their children, which is monstrous and, as a debating move, effective. 兒女 takes 兒 as ér.

For fifty taels of silver you could buy a boy;

拚了 is to lay out money and not count the cost. Fifty taels buys a boy.

for a hundred taels you could buy a girl.

A hundred buys a girl — twice the price, and the text lets that sit there without a word of explanation. It is a market Wukong evidently knows the rates in.

All told, with incidentals, no more than two hundred taels — and you could keep your own children and your line's posterity. Is that not the better course?"

絞纏 is the incidental costs around a transaction, the wrapping and the middlemen. Two hundred taels all told, against a fortune in land and cattle, and you keep your own children and your line after them. 之數 takes 數 as shù; 兒女 takes 兒 as ér. The arithmetic is unanswerable, and the answer comes anyway.

The two elders wept: "Reverend, you do not understand.

你不知道: you don't understand. Said through tears, and it is the turn of the whole passage.

That Great King is exceedingly numinous, and comes often to walk among our households."

甚是靈感 takes 甚 as shèn, "extremely" — the god is very good indeed at answering. 行走 takes 行 as xíng, and the verb is domestic: he comes *calling*, the way a neighbour drops in. That is worse than any amount of thunder. 那 points — nà.

Pilgrim said: "When he comes walking, what sort of face do you see him wear?

嘴臉 is the face, features, look of a thing. Wukong asks the two questions a fighter asks: what does he look like, and how big is he? 甚 is shén.

And how tall or short is he?"

長短 takes 長 as cháng, the dimension reading — how long or short, meaning how tall. He is sizing up an opponent.

The two elders said: "We see no shape of him; only we smell a gust of fragrant wind, and know the Great King has come, and hasten to burn a full dǒu of incense, young and old bowing toward the wind.

And gets nothing to fight. 不見其形, no shape is ever seen; only 一陣香風, a gust of fragrant wind — which in this book is the standard warning that something supernatural has arrived, and here it is the whole of what anyone knows. 滿斗焚香 is burning a full dǒu measure of incense, 斗 read dǒu; 望風下拜, bowing toward the wind, is worship aimed at a direction because there is no figure to aim it at. 聞得 takes 得 as dé.

The petty affairs of our households, down to the size of a spoon or a bowl, he knows them all;

匙大碗小之事 — matters the size of a spoon or a bowl — is a homely way of saying he knows everything, down to the crockery. The god has been in their kitchens. 都 is dōu.

the birth-times of young and old, the year and month, he remembers them all.

And he keeps the register: 老幼生時年月, the birth year and month of every soul in the village, young and old. 記得 takes 得 as de; 都 is dōu. He is not a monster in the hills. He is an administrator with a census.

Only flesh-and-blood children will he accept for his enjoyment.

親生 is your own, born of your body; 受用 is to take enjoyment of a thing. Only true-born children will do — which closes the loophole and, without anyone noticing, opens a different one.

Not to speak of two or three hundred taels, with no place to buy them — even for tens of millions there is nowhere to buy children so exactly alike, of the same year and month."

一模一樣, cut from the same mould, is still the everyday Chinese for identical; 同年同月 matches them by birth year and month. Not two or three hundred taels, not tens of millions — there is nowhere to buy children who match. The reply is meant to close the argument. What it actually does is write the specification for a forgery, and the one creature in the room who can meet it is listening. 兒女 takes 兒 as ér.