紅車賣糕 A Red Cart Selling Cakes
只見門外一個少年男子，推一輛紅車兒，住在門傍，叫聲：「賣糕。」大聖拔根毫毛，變個銅錢，問那人買糕。那人接了錢，不論好歹，揭開車兒上衣裹，熱氣騰騰，拿出一塊糕，遞與行者。行者托在手中，好似火裡燒的灼炭，煤爐內的紅釘。你看他左手倒在右手，右手換在左手，只道：「熱熱熱，難吃難吃！」只见门外一个少年男子，推一辆红车儿，住在门傍，叫声：「卖糕。」大圣拔根毫毛，变个铜钱，问那人买糕。那人接了钱，不论好歹，揭开车儿上衣裹，热气腾腾，拿出一块糕，递与行者。行者托在手中，好似火里烧的灼炭，煤炉内的红钉。你看他左手倒在右手，右手换在左手，只道：「热热热，难吃难吃！」
逐句解 Line by line
Just then, outside the gate, a young man came pushing a little red cart. He stopped beside the door and called out, 'Cakes for sale!'
少 is shào, "young," in 少年, not the shǎo of "few." Watch the two 兒-type endings pull apart here: 男子 keeps the dignified zǐ, while 車兒 takes the genuine curled-back er that just means "a little cart" — against 小兒 earlier in the chapter, where 兒 was a full syllable meaning "child." And everything is red again.
The Great Sage plucked out a hair, changed it into a copper coin, and asked the man for a cake.
Note how casually the counterfeiting goes by. Pilgrim's hairs have been copies of himself, weapons and ropes; here one becomes small change, and neither the narrator nor the vendor thinks it worth a remark.
The man took the coin without troubling over whether it was good or bad, lifted the cloth wrapping on the cart — steam came billowing up — took out a piece of cake, and handed it to Pilgrim.
不論好歹, "without sorting good from bad," is a stock phrase quietly earning its keep: the coin is a hair, and the only reason it passes is that nobody looks at it. 衣裹 is the cloth a street hawker throws over his goods.
Pilgrim held it up in his palm, and it was like a live coal burning in a fire, like a nail heated red in a coal stove.
灼炭 is charcoal glowing red; 紅釘 is an iron nail heated the same colour. Both similes come out of a smithy, and they carry on the 淬 image Eight Rules used earlier — the chapter keeps reaching for metalwork whenever it needs to describe heat.
Just look at him: shifting it from the left hand into the right, changing it from the right hand back into the left, and saying nothing but 'Hot, hot, hot! Can't eat it, can't eat it!'
倒 is dǎo here, to tip or shift something from one hand to the other; the other reading, dào, is the adverb "on the contrary," which this chapter also uses three passages further on. 你看他 — "just look at him" — is the storyteller turning round to his audience.
The cake-seller arrives with no preparation at all and the whole register of the scene changes. After two passages of argument about the cosmos and one of formal hospitality, a young man wheels a red cart up to the door and shouts his wares. The novel is very good at this — dropping an ordinary bit of commerce into the middle of a supernatural crisis and letting the ordinariness do the work.
Pilgrim's forgery is the detail worth stopping on. He pulls out a hair, turns it into a coin, and buys a cake with it, and neither he nor the narrator treats this as anything but handy. The vendor takes the coin 不論好歹, without checking — a phrase pulling double duty, since it explains why a hair passes as money and at the same time paints a man too hot and too busy to care.
The cake gets the best pair of similes in the chapter: a live coal in a fire, a nail heated red in a coal stove. Both come from the forge, and they belong with Eight Rules' image of fire plunged into water a few passages back. The chapter keeps describing heat in the vocabulary of metalwork — which is the vocabulary of things that have been made hot deliberately.
And then the Great Sage juggles it from hand to hand shouting that it is too hot to eat. He has fought his way out of Laozi's furnace; here he is defeated by a pastry. The storyteller's 你看他 — just look at him — invites the audience to enjoy the come-down.