老黿出水 The Old Turtle Appears
正都在河邊上吵鬧，忽聽得河中間高叫：「孫大聖不要打船，花費人家財物。我送你師徒們過去。」眾人聽說，個個心驚，膽小的走了回家，膽大的戰兢兢貪看。須臾，那水裡鑽出一個怪來，你道怎生模樣：正都在河边上吵闹，忽听得河中间高叫：「孙大圣不要打船，花费人家财物。我送你师徒们过去。」众人听说，个个心惊，胆小的走了回家，胆大的战兢兢贪看。须臾，那水里钻出一个怪来，你道怎生模样：
逐句解 Line by line
They were all in an uproar of haggling at the riverside when suddenly, from the middle of the river, came a loud cry: "Great Sage Sun, do not build a boat, do not waste the people's goods and money. I will carry you and your master across."
正都在 takes 都 as dōu; 聽得 keeps 得 as dé; 河中間 takes 中 as zhōng and 間 as jiān. A 。 falls inside the shouted speech and it is one utterance. A voice from the middle of the river stops the boat-building and turns the crossing into something much stranger.
When the people heard it, every one of them took fright. The faint-hearted ran home; the bold stood watching in fear and trembling.
走了 takes 了 as the tag le; 貪看 keeps 看 as kàn — "greedy to look," which is exactly the impulse. 戰兢兢, shaking all over. These are people who have feared this water all their lives, and something in it has just spoken.
In a moment, a monster bored up out of the water. Consider what it looked like:
那水裡 points, nà. 你道怎生模樣 with a colon is the cue — "and what did it look like, do you suppose?" Four couplets follow, and prose and poem belong to one passage.
A square-headed numinous creature, no common kind; / by ninefold workings of the spirit, styled the Water Immortal.
號水仙: 號 is hào, "to be styled, to go by the name of." The same character was háo, "to howl," earlier in this chapter, when the demon came roaring up out of the water. 九助靈機 refers to the ninefold workings ascribed to the divine tortoise in old Chinese lore.
Trailing his tail, he can draw out a thousand ages of life; / hiding his body, he lies quiet in the deeps of a hundred rivers.
曳尾, dragging the tail, is a direct nod to one of the most famous stories in the 莊子: the sacred tortoise of Chu, whose shell was kept wrapped in cloth on an altar, and which Zhuangzi says would surely rather have stayed alive dragging its tail through the mud. In two characters the line claims that whole preference for this creature. 千紀, a thousand ages; 百川淵, the deeps of a hundred rivers.
Churning the waves, leaping the billows, he buffets the river-bank; / facing the sun, meeting the wind, he lies at the sea's edge.
向日朝風 takes 朝 as cháo, "facing toward." The couplet gives him both postures of his kind: violent in the water, and flat out on the shore in the sun like any turtle on any bank.
Nurturing his breath and holding the numen, he truly has the Way: / for many a year the powder-crusted, scabby-headed turtle.
癩頭黿: 黿 is yuán, the great soft-shelled turtle, and 癩頭 is scabby-headed. Having spent three and a half couplets making him a holy creature, the poem finishes by calling him a mangy old river turtle. The affection in that is unmistakable.
The old turtle's poem runs on two registers at once, grand and homely, and it says where it got the grand one. 曳尾, trailing the tail, points straight at the parable in the 莊子: the sacred tortoise of Chu, dead three thousand years and honoured in a box on an altar, which Zhuangzi says would surely rather be alive and dragging its tail through the mud. In two characters the line claims that whole Daoist preference — humble life over exalted death — for the creature now surfacing in the river. The rest of the attributes are old lore too: the square head, the ninefold workings, the thousand-year lifespan all belong to the divine tortoise of Chinese antiquity, the shell that was burned for oracles and read for the pattern of the cosmos.
And then the last line punctures all of it. 多年粉蓋癩頭黿 — the powder-crusted, scabby-headed old turtle. The poem grants him the Way and calls him mangy in the same breath, and the incongruity is precisely the point. This is a real adept inside a river turtle, and the chapter, having just shown the Bodhisattva of Mercy barefoot and whittling, is entirely comfortable with holiness in shabby clothes.
His arrival also collects a debt the reader has been carrying since the second passage. The sign over the demon's gate read 水黿之第, Mansion of the Water Turtle, and named an owner who never appeared. Here he is.