The Great Sage Sun harboured a discordant heart; Bajie and Sha Monk too had thoughts of jealousy; and master and disciples were all fair to the face and false behind the back.

面是背非 — right to the face, wrong behind the back — takes 背 as bèi, the back you have rather than the bēi of carrying something on it. The narrator states the condition of the whole party flatly, in his own voice, which he has not done since the chapter opened with a poem.

They went along the high road westward, and of a sudden saw, off to the north of the road, a farmstead.

莊院 is a walled farm compound. The reprieve arrives exactly one sentence after the quarrel is named.

Tripitaka pointed at it with his whip and said, “Let us go over there and beg a night’s lodging.”

指定 settles 那裡 as the pointing nà — he has the whip out and is aiming it — against the vague nǎ of the previous passage. 借宿 has 宿 as sù.

Bajie said, “Just so.”

Five characters, a complete exchange with its own attribution. It is also the only thing anybody agrees about in this passage.

So they went as far as the farm buildings and dismounted.

莊舍 takes 舍 at shè, a dwelling, not shě, to give up.

Looking at it, they found it a fine place to stop.

住場 is a place to stop. Eight characters, and they turn the party from travellers into guests — which is what makes the description that follows possible at all.

Behold:

但見, behold, is the sixth of the chapter's seven handover formulae and the last of its three landscape pieces.

Wild flowers fill the path; mingled trees screen the gate.

A four-and-four opening. 扉 is the leaf of a door, and screening it with trees is the conventional first sign of a retired dwelling — the visual shorthand for a household that has withdrawn from the world's business.

On the far bank a hill stream runs; in the level beds are sown wheat and mallow.

種 is a verb here, to sow, so zhòng — not zhǒng, a seed. 葵 is mallow, an ordinary kitchen crop, and its presence beside the wheat is what marks this as a working farm rather than a hermitage.

Reed and rush are moist with dew, and the light gull roosts; the willows stir in a slight wind, and the tired birds settle.

輕鷗宿 uses 宿 as a verb, to roost, so sù — the third of the three readings this character takes in the chapter. 蒹葭, reed and rush, comes from the 秦風 section of the 詩經 and brings its dew with it.

Green cypress among the pines contends in emerald; red fleabane against the smartweed vies in fragrance.

蓬 is fleabane — a shaggy, many-branched weed of field margins and stream banks, daisy family, the sort of thing that comes up unasked at the edge of a ploughed bed. The character on its own means a tangled clump of the stuff, which is why it also does duty for a mop of untidy hair. It is not the bulrush: that is 蒲, the calamus hung at the door for the Double Fifth back at the start of the chapter. 間 is a verb here — to be interspersed among — so jiàn, not jiān, a gap. Notice the pair of verbs: 爭 and 鬥 are both words for fighting, used here of plants competing in colour and scent. It is the only conflict in the passage.

The village dogs bark, the evening cocks crow; the cattle and sheep have eaten their fill, and the herd-boys are coming home.

A three-and-three-and-seven line. The description moves from plants to animals to people in the space of thirteen characters, and everything in it is coming home.

Hearth-smoke gathers into mist, the yellow millet is done: this is the hour when a hill household comes to dusk.

爨 is the cooking hearth — twenty-nine strokes for a stove. 黃粱 is the yellow millet of the proverbial dream, and here it is simply supper. The closing line names a time of day rather than a place, which is unusual for this form and is the whole effect.