One day the Lady Queen Mother set out a banquet, threw open the Treasure Pavilion, and held the Grand Peach Feast at the Jade Pool.

一朝 reads yì zhāo, one morning — the 一 lifting to yì before the level tone of 朝. 勝會 is a gathering of the very first rank, so 蟠桃勝會 is the Grand Peach Feast itself, the fixture of heaven's calendar. In 娘娘, as with all doubled terms of address, the second syllable goes neutral.

She thereupon ordered the fairies in red, in azure, in white, in black, in purple, in yellow, and in green — each to take up a flower-basket and go to the Peach Garden to pick peaches for the feast.

Seven fairies, seven robes, and the colours are the whole of their names — the 七衣仙女, the Seven-Robed Fairies: red, azure (青), white, black (皂), purple, yellow and green (綠). 即著 is jí zhuó here, "thereupon ordered."

The seven-robed fairies came right up to the garden gate, and there were the Peach Garden's earth-god and strongmen, together with the two clerks of the Equal-to-Heaven residence, all guarding the gate.

園門首 is the gate-front and 把門 is to hold the gate. There is a quiet joke in the staffing: the guard Monkey posted over the garden is about to become the reason nobody can find Monkey.

The fairies came forward and said: 'We come by the Queen Mother's august command, to pick peaches here and lay out the feast.'

懿旨 (yì zhǐ) is the formal term for a command issued by an empress or a dowager, kept strictly separate from 聖旨, the emperor's. The Queen Mother's authority comes with a vocabulary of its own, and the fairies use it like a badge.

The earth-god said: 'Hold a moment, fairy maidens. This year is not as years past: the Jade Emperor has appointed the Great Sage Equal to Heaven to oversee this place, and we must report to the Great Sage before we dare open the garden.'

仙娥 (xiān é), fairy maidens, is a courteous form of address. 督理 reads dū lǐ, to superintend. In 得知 the 得 heads a clause of its own — to come to know — so it keeps the full dé, against the light linking de of 等不得 earlier in the chapter.

The fairies said: 'Where is the Great Sage?'

Four characters, and the entire difficulty of the chapter sits in them: the overseer the Jade Emperor appointed cannot be produced when he is wanted.

The earth-god said: 'The Great Sage is within; being weary, he is asleep by himself up on the pavilion.'

哩 is the vernacular sentence-ender and carries no tone. 亭子 takes the neutral 子 suffix. And the earth-god is telling the exact truth as he understands it — he has no idea the pavilion is empty.

The fairies said: 'If so, then go and find him — there must be no delay.'

去來 is a vernacular compound imperative in which 來 adds no motion of its own: simply "off you go." It occurs once in this chapter.

The earth-god went in with them at once.

Six characters to move the whole party from the gate into the garden. The narrative spends nothing on the walk and everything on what is not there at the end of it.

But searching to the flower-pavilion they found him gone: only his robe and cap lay there, and where he had gone none knew — nowhere on any side was there a trace of him.

衣冠: the cap and robe he shed to climb the trees, still lying where he dropped them. 四下裡 is on every side. The clothes are evidence, and not one of the searchers standing over them reads them that way.

Now the Great Sage, after sporting a while and eating a few peaches, had changed into a little figure two cùn tall and fallen asleep beneath the dense leaves at the very top of one of the great trees.

And here he is. 寸 is cùn, a Chinese inch — a tenth of a 尺, so roughly three centimetres, making him about the size of a thumb. 睡著 reads shuì zháo, "fell asleep."

The seven-robed fairies said: 'We have come by command and cannot find the Great Sage — how should we dare go back empty-handed?'

空回 (kōng huí): to go back empty-handed. 怎敢 — how should we dare — is their real problem. They answer to the Queen Mother whichever way they choose.

A serving-immortal nearby said: 'Since you fairy maidens come by command, there is no need to hesitate. Our Great Sage is well used to roaming at leisure — he has likely gone out of the garden to visit friends. Go and pick your peaches; we will answer for you when he returns.'

回話 is to carry an answer back on somebody else's behalf — covering for a colleague who has stepped out. The offer is kindly meant and it is the hinge of the whole chapter: it lets the peaches be picked, and so lets the theft be found out, without the Great Sage ever being consulted. 傍 is páng here, standing in for 旁 in its plain sense of beside — not the bàng of leaning against something.