一扇息火 One Fan Puts Out Fire
行者笑道：「老人家，茶飯倒不必賜，我問你：鐵扇仙在那裡住？」老者道：「你問他怎的？」行者道：「適才那賣糕人說，此仙有柄芭蕉扇。求將來，一扇息火，二扇生風，三扇下雨，你這方布種收割，才得五穀養生。我欲尋他討來搧息火燄山過去，且使這方依時收種，得安生也。」行者笑道：「老人家，茶饭倒不必赐，我问你：铁扇仙在那里住？」老者道：「你问他怎的？」行者道：「适才那卖糕人说，此仙有柄芭蕉扇。求将来，一扇息火，二扇生风，三扇下雨，你这方布种收割，才得五谷养生。我欲寻他讨来扇息火燄山过去，且使这方依时收种，得安生也。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said with a laugh, 'Old sir, as for tea and rice, there's no need to bestow them. Let me ask you this: where does the Iron-Fan Immortal live?'
倒 is now the adverb dào, "as it happens, on the contrary" — the second reading this character has taken in a short stretch, against the dǎo of shifting the cake from hand to hand three passages back. 在那裡住 asks where, nǎ.
The old man said, 'What do you ask after her for?'
The source writes 他, which in this period is not marked for gender at all. The Iron-Fan Immortal has not yet been identified as a woman; the English supplies "her" from what comes later in the chapter, not from the pronoun.
Pilgrim said, 'That cake-seller just now told me this immortal has a banana-leaf fan.'
適才, "just now." 柄 is the measure word for a fan, as for anything with a handle. Pilgrim is repeating the vendor's account almost word for word, and the next line will repeat it closer still.
'Get it by petition, and one fanning puts out the fire, a second raises wind, a third brings down rain; then this district of yours can sow and reap, and only so do you get the five grains to live on.'
求將來 uses 將 as the colloquial filler that slots inside a verb phrase, on the pattern of 打將來 and 搶將來 — not the handling word of 將糕遞與 a moment ago, though it sounds the same. Pilgrim hands back the vendor's three clauses nearly verbatim, which is how the novel shows that he was listening.
'I mean to seek her out and ask for the loan of it, fan out the Mountain of Flames and get across; and at the same time let this district sow and reap in season, so that you may live at ease.'
The mountain's name is written here with 燄, where the other eleven times it appears in this chapter it is written 焰 — two characters for the same word, differing by one component on the left. The source is inconsistent with itself and the inconsistency is kept as printed rather than tidied away. 搧 shān is the verb "to fan," which the chapter keeps carefully apart from the noun 扇 shàn, the fan itself; this is its first appearance.
Pilgrim waves the hospitality aside and asks his question straight out: where does the Iron-Fan Immortal live? He has the answer he wanted from the vendor and now he wants the address, and the courtesies that filled the previous passage are dispatched in four characters.
His account of the fan repeats the cake-seller's three clauses almost exactly — one fanning puts the fire out, a second raises wind, a third brings rain, and then you can sow and reap. The near-verbatim repetition is not padding. It shows that Pilgrim listened hard to a stranger in the road, and it lets the reader hear the formula twice before it becomes the object of the quest.
His statement of intent afterwards is entirely characteristic. He will borrow the fan, fan out the mountain, get across — and while he is at it, the district can sow in season and live at ease. The second half is real but secondary; Pilgrim habitually fixes other people's problems in the course of fixing his own, and the novel neither underlines the generosity nor lets him take credit for it.