但見好山 A Fine Mountain
卻說那孫大聖觔斗雲起，少頃間，見一座山頭阻住雲角。即按雲光，睜睛看處，好山！但見那：却说那孙大圣觔斗云起，少顷间，见一座山头阻住云角。即按云光，睁睛看处，好山！但见那：
逐句解 Line by line
Now the Great Sage Sun rose on his cloud-somersault, and in a short while saw a mountain-head blocking the corner of his cloud.
觔斗 takes 斗 as dǒu, the measuring-vessel character, never dòu, to fight. 阻住雲角 hands the mountain the initiative: it stops the cloud, rather than the rider deciding to come down.
He pressed down the cloud-glow at once and opened his eyes to look. A fine mountain! And this is what he saw:
好山！ — a fine mountain! — followed by 但見那, and this is what he saw. The exclamation and the cue together are the standard way this novel opens a description of scenery; the same pattern, with 好砂, opened one in chapter fifty-two.
Secluded flowers spreading brocade; wild grasses laying down indigo.
鋪 is the verb pū, to spread something out, not the pù of a shop-front. The opening couplet renders the mountain as cloth — brocade and dye — and that is the figure the whole description keeps coming back to.
Ravine waters falling linked together; brook-clouds idle all alike.
相 is xiāng. 一樣閑 says the clouds are idle in the same way as each other: not merely alike, but alike in having nothing to do.
Fold upon fold of valleys, the creepers thick; far and far the peaks, the trees luxuriant.
Both 重 are chóng, layered, not zhòng, heavy. 重重 and 遠遠 balance depth against distance, and the couplet widens from four characters to seven — the widening this piece keeps performing.
Birds calling, wild geese passing; deer drinking, gibbons climbing.
Four verbs in eight characters, one creature apiece. The lines are back to four characters, matching the couplet that opened the piece, and this is the only couplet in the whole description with nothing in it but living things.
Kingfisher ridges like a folding screen; blue cliffs like a coiled chignon.
岱 properly names Mount Tai, and is used here for a ridge in general. 髻鬟 is the looped coil of a woman's dressed hair, a stock figure for rounded peaks — and in this chapter, of all chapters, not an idle one. 似 is sì.
Rolling dust could truly never reach here; the trickling springs and rocks one never tires to watch.
塵埃 is the dust of the world in its figurative sense, so the couplet is claiming seclusion rather than cleanliness. 難 is nán, 石 is shí, 看 is kàn.
Ever one sees the immortals' boys going out to gather herbs; often one meets a woodcutter coming back under his load of faggots.
還 is huán, to return, not hái, still. 樵子 takes the light suffix zi. The couplet populates the mountain with exactly the two figures a Daoist landscape requires — a herb-gathering acolyte and a woodcutter — and has both of them running errands rather than contemplating anything.
Truly it yields nothing to the prospect of Mount Tiantai, and surpasses the three peaks of Mount Hua in the west.
華 is huá. The closing couplet ranks the mountain against two famous holy sites: Tiantai, seat of the Tiantai school of Buddhism, and Hua, the Daoist western marchmount. 不亞…勝似 is the same concede-then-surpass figure the ferry-boat description used.
The chapter's fourth set-piece is a mountain description, the most conventional of all the forms this novel keeps in stock, and it is executed with unusual metrical variety. The lines move in a repeating figure: four characters, then five, then seven; then four, five and seven over again; then seven for the last two couplets as well.
The governing figure is cloth. Flowers spread brocade, grasses lay down indigo, ridges stand like a folding screen, cliffs coil like dressed hair. A landscape rendered as furnishing and adornment is a commonplace of the form, but the hair-simile repays a pause here: 髻鬟 is specifically a woman's coiffure, and the mountain being described stands in the Women's Country, a few hours' walk from a village where two men are pregnant. The novel does not press the connection.
The closing couplet does what such descriptions almost always do, which is to certify the scene by comparison. Mount Tiantai and Mount Hua are named not as descriptions but as benchmarks — one Buddhist, one Daoist — and the mountain is declared equal to the first and better than the second. Since the mountain in question houses a Daoist who is squeezing the local villagers, the ranking has a slight edge to it.
It is worth registering how the passage arrives. Wukong has been sent for medicine and is most of the way through a thirty-lǐ errand; the mountain stops his cloud, and the narrative stops with it for ninety-two characters of scenery. This is the novel's settled rhythm — urgency suspended for description — and the suspension is not carelessness. The pilgrimage is made of such intervals. The ordeals are what punctuate them.