Now the Tang Elder and his three disciples were lodged at the Chen house, and as it drew towards daybreak their quilts were cold and their pillows colder.

唐長老: 長 is zhǎng, "elder." 將近: 將 is jiāng, "getting on towards." 衾寒枕冷 is a set four-character phrase — quilts cold and pillows colder — and the poem that follows spends eighteen lines unpacking it.

Eight Rules coughed and chattered and could not sleep, and called out: 「Elder brother, it's cold.」

睡不得: 得 is dé, and 不 stays bù before its rising tone. 咳歌打戰, coughing and shivering — everyday doubling, and the sound of a fat man in a cold bed.

Pilgrim said: 「You idiot, you never come along at all.

忒不長俊: 長 is zhǎng, in the sense of 長進, to improve, to come on. Wukong is saying that Eight Rules never gets any better at anything. 不 stays bù before a falling-rising tone.

One who has left the household is untouched by heat or cold. What is this fear of freezing?」

寒暑不侵, untouched by heat or cold, is the formula for what a trained adept is supposed to have achieved. Wukong is holding Eight Rules to a standard the pig has plainly not reached, and enjoying himself.

Tripitaka said: 「Disciple, it is truly cold.

三藏: 藏 is zàng. The master takes the pig's side, and that is the joke.

Look — it is just this:

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

Quilts piled in layers, and no warmth in them; / hands drawn into sleeves as though cradling ice.

重衾: 重 is chóng, "layered, doubled." The poem's whole argument is that piling layers on does not work, so this cannot be zhòng, "heavy." 似 is sì, a reading fixed across this edition.

By now the fallen leaves bear frost for blossom, / and the blue-green pine hangs strung with bells of ice.

The poem runs eighteen lines of five characters, all on one rhyme, in the strict manner. This line alone carries two extra characters, 此時, as a lead-in. 霜蕊 and 凍鈴: frost standing in for blossom, icicles for the bells hung along a temple eave.

The ground splits because the cold is extreme; / the pool lies level because the water has set.

寒甚: 甚 is shèn, "extremely." 為 is wèi here, "because of," matching 因 in the other half of the couplet.

On the fishing boat no old man to be seen; / at the mountain temple, how should one meet a monk?

The couplet empties out the two scenes a reader of this kind of poem expects to find peopled — the fisherman on the water, the monk in the hills. Neither is there.

The woodcutter grieves his faggots are few; / the young lord is glad his charcoal grows.

樵子: 子 is zǐ, the literary ending that makes a person-noun, as in 遊子, a man far from home, or 浪子, a wastrel — not the light zi of everyday speech. 少 is shǎo, "few." One line sets the man who cannot afford fuel against the man whose fuel is going up in value.

The traveller's beard is iron; / the poet's brush a water-caltrop.

征人 is the man on campaign or long on the road; 筆如菱 — the brush frozen to a hard spiked point, like the water-caltrop, the spiny black nut that grows in Chinese ponds.

The leather coat still seems too thin; / the sable robe is grudged as light.

薄 is báo, thin in physical thickness, not bó, thin in the abstract. Two garments of real warmth, a leather coat and a sable robe, and both found wanting.

On his mat the old monk is stiffened; / within the paper bed-curtain the traveller's soul takes fright.

老衲, "old patched-robe," is what a monk calls himself. 紙帳 is the paper bed-curtain of a cheap lodging — paper, in a poem about cold.

Embroidered coverlet over layered mattresses — / and the whole body shakes like a hand-bell.」

重裀褥: 重 is chóng again, "layered." The last image goes back to the first: bedding heaped up, and no use at all.