None of them could sleep, so they got up and put their clothes on.

都 is dōu, "all"; 睡不得: 得 is dé.

They opened the door to look — ah!

看處: 看 is kàn, 處 is chù. The bare 呀 carries the whole surprise, and the narrator gives it a sentence of its own.

Outside, everything a blank white: it had been snowing.

The final 哩 is li, a reading fixed across this edition. 白茫茫 doubles white out into a blank — a whiteness with nothing in it to look at.

Pilgrim said: 「No wonder you were all suffering with the cold — and a great snow it is, too.」

怪道, "no wonder." 哩 is li again. Wukong concedes the point he was scoffing at before the poem.

The four of them looked out together. A fine snow!

觀看: 觀 is guān, "to observe" — not guàn, a Daoist abbey. 好雪, "a fine snow," is the exclamation that opens the showpiece.

Only see:

The line announcing the poem stands on its own; 那 is nà, pointing forward.

Crimson clouds spread close; grim mists steeped heavy.

重浸: 重 is zhòng here, "heavily," balancing 密 in the matching clause — and to be kept apart from the chóng of 重衾 and 重裀褥 in the poem just past. These two four-character clauses state the theme; the lines that follow take each one up in turn and expand it.

Crimson clouds spread close — the north wind cries bitter through the void;

號 is hào, "to howl." 朔風 is the wind out of the north.

grim mists steeped heavy — the great snow falls thick and blankets the earth.

重 is zhòng, repeating the theme clause word for word. This is how a showpiece of this kind is built: state a phrase, then say it again with its consequence hung on the end. What looks like a copyist repeating himself is the form working as designed.

Truly: the six-petalled flower, flake upon flake of flying jade;

真個是 sits inside the poem here — a turn within the verse, not a fresh announcement of one, so it stays in the verse. 六出花, "the six-petalled flower," is the old name for a snowflake, and it is good observation: snow crystals really do grow on six axes.

the thousand groves of trees, trunk upon trunk decked with jade.

The parallel completes the couplet begun above — three characters at the head, four at the tail, the gait these showpieces walk in.

In a moment it heaps like powder; in an instant it turns to salt.

積粉 and 成鹽, the two commonest kitchen similes for snow, used without a trace of embarrassment.

The white parrot's singing loses its plainness; the pale crane's plumage is matched at last.

Two birds proverbial for whiteness, one outdone by the snow and one merely matched.

It adds a level thousand rivers to the waters of Wu and Chu; it bears down the few plum trees of the southeast.

壓倒: 倒 is dǎo, "to topple, to bear down" — not the dào of "on the contrary."

For all the world like three million jade dragons beaten back in battle; / truly as if broken scales and shattered armour filled the whole sky in flight.

The couplet takes up a famous conceit: snow as jade dragons beaten in battle, shedding scales and armour across the sky. Worth noticing where we are standing. The novel has already given us real scales, knocked off a real river-demon about eleven hundred characters back, and the figure lands differently here than it would in a poem standing on its own.

Where here is Dongguo's shoe, Yuan An lying within doors, Sun Kang reading by the glare;

那裡 is nǎ here — "where indeed," a question expecting no answer, not a pointing word. 得 is dé. Three snow anecdotes of the genteel poor: Dongguo Xianshun walking out in shoes with the soles gone, Yuan An staying shut in his house rather than trouble neighbours who had troubles of their own, and Sun Kang, too poor for lamp oil, reading by the light thrown back off the snow.

still less do we see Ziyou's boat, Wang Gong's mantle, Su Wu at his felt.

更 is gèng, "still less." 子猷: 子 is zǐ, part of a courtesy name — Wang Huizhi, who rowed all night through snow to a friend's door and turned back without knocking, on the grounds that he had felt like going and no longer felt like it. The third name carries a textual problem. This edition prints 王恭幣, and the story pointed at is Wang Gong's cloak of crane-down — 鶴氅裘 in 世說新語 — where you would expect 氅, a robe of fur or feathers, and not 幣, an offering of silk, which gives no sense here at all. An early slip carried faithfully forward is the likeliest account of it. This edition prints what its source prints and flags the difficulty rather than quietly mending it.

There are only a few village cottages like masonry of silver, ten thousand li of rivers and hills like moulded jade.

村舍: 舍 is shè, "dwelling." 似 is sì, a reading fixed across this edition.

A fine snow! Willow-down drifting over the bridge, pear blossom covering the cottage.

蓋舍: 舍 is shè, not shě, "to give up." A second theme statement, opening the showpiece's second movement.

Willow-down drifting over the bridge — beside the bridge the old fisherman hangs up his straw cape;

The expansion runs exactly as it did in the first movement: state the clause, then say it again and hang a scene off the end.

pear blossom covering the cottage — below the cottage the old countryman banks his fire with knotted wood.

Both 舍 are shè. 骨柮 is gnarled stumps and knots — the worst firewood there is, and what you burn when there is nothing else.

The sojourner can scarcely buy wine; the grey-headed servant searches bitterly for plum.

客子: 子 is zǐ, the literary person-noun again. 難 is nán. 蒼頭, "grey-head," is an old servant.

Sprinkling and streaming, it cuts out butterfly wings; drifting and swaying, it clips coats of goose-down.

Four doubled pairs in fourteen characters. The poem has gone over almost entirely to sound here — and the verbs, cutting and clipping, quietly turn the snow into a tailor.

Rolling and rolling, it follows the set of the wind; heaped fold on fold, it makes the roads go astray.

道路迷 — the danger, named in passing, in the middle of a catalogue of delights.

Gust upon gust, the cold power pierces the little curtain; whistling and whistling, the chill air passes into the inner hangings.

幙 and 幃 are the outer and the inner bed-curtain. The cold is moving inward, from the landscape to the bedroom.

An omen of a fruitful year, come down out of Heaven — matter for congratulation, and a fine thing among men.

從天降: 降 is jiàng. The showpiece closes on the conventional reading of a heavy snow — an omen of a good harvest, sent down by Heaven — which in this chapter is wrong in every particular.

That fall of snow, sprinkling and scattering, was truly like cut jade and flying floss.

那場雪 is nà, and 場 is cháng, the reading it takes when it counts an event rather than names a place. The narrator's own voice comes back, and the passage shuts.