原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
挽不住韁 The Elder Cannot Hold the Rein
那長老挽不住韁繩，只扳緊著鞍鞽，讓他放了一路轡頭，有二十里向開田地，方才緩步而行。那长老挽不住缰绳，只扳紧着鞍鞒，让他放了一路辔头，有二十里向开田地，方才缓步而行。
逐句解 Line by line
那長老挽不住韁繩，只扳緊著鞍鞽，讓他放了一路轡頭，有二十里向開田地，方才緩步而行。
那长老挽不住缰绳，只扳紧着鞍鞒，让他放了一路辔头，有二十里向开田地，方才缓步而行。
The elder could not hold the rein in. He could only grip the saddle-bow tight and let the horse have its head the whole way; and it was a good twenty li, out to where the land opened up, before it fell at last into a walking pace.
One sentence, and it is pure horsemanship. The 鞍鞽 is the saddle-bow, the raised front of the saddle — the one fixed thing a rider can grab. 放 a horse's 放轡頭 is to give it its head and stop trying to steer. And 里 is the lǐ, the Chinese mile, roughly half a kilometre: twenty of them is ten kilometres of mountain road at a bolt.
One sentence carries the whole plot mechanism. Wukong's shout was meant to hurry a slow horse; what it actually does is separate the master from his disciples by twenty 里 of mountain road, which is the precondition for everything the chapter then does. The narrative does not pause to say so.
The detail of 扳緊著鞍鞽 — gripping the saddle-bow and nothing else — is small and exact. Tripitaka is not riding the horse; he is being carried by it, holding on to the only solid thing within reach. That has been his posture for fifty-five chapters, and the novel renders it here as literal riding.