公公請糕 Please Take The Cake
行者聞言，急抽身走入裡面，將糕遞與三藏道：「師父放心，且莫隔年焦著。吃了糕，我與你說。」長老接糕在手，向本宅老者道：「公公請糕。」老者道：「我家的茶飯未奉，敢吃你糕？」行者闻言，急抽身走入里面，将糕递与三藏道：「师父放心，且莫隔年焦着。吃了糕，我与你说。」长老接糕在手，向本宅老者道：「公公请糕。」老者道：「我家的茶饭未奉，敢吃你糕？」
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Pilgrim turned away at once and went inside. Handing the cake to Tripitaka, he said, 'Master, set your mind at rest — don't go catching next year's panic today. Eat the cake, and I'll tell you.'
A vivid piece of everyday speech. 焦著 is a fixed unit, and 著 takes the zháo reading that means catching or being caught by something — the same one at work in 著急 and 著慌, where worry takes hold of a person the way a fever does. So 焦 here is not "scorched" but "burning with anxiety," and the chapter settles the reading itself: its only other 焦 is 心焦 in the woodcutter's 休得心焦, "no need to fret." With 隔年, "a year off," the whole phrase comes out as: do not let next year's panic catch hold of you today. Read 著 the other way, as ongoing action, and it would mean only fretting while doing something else, which throws away the punch. 將 is the handling word jiāng that puts the cake in front of the verb.
The Elder took the cake in his hand and said to the old man of the house, 'Sir, please take some cake.'
長老, zhǎng lǎo, for Tripitaka again. 本宅老者, "the old man of this house," marks him as the host. The cake, bought with a counterfeit coin, is now circulating as good manners.
The old man said, 'My own tea and rice have not yet been served — how should I dare eat your cake?'
The refusal is compulsory rather than sincere: a host who has not yet fed his guests cannot accept food from them. 敢 is rhetorical here — "how should I dare" — not a real question about permission.
Pilgrim goes straight indoors with the cake, and the first thing he does is tell his master not to catch next year's panic today. 焦著 is colloquial and vivid — anxiety as a thing that takes hold of you, the way 著急 and 著慌 use the same character — and the needling is affectionate and habitual. He made the same complaint about dawdling a few passages earlier. It also does something practical: it stops Tripitaka asking questions before Pilgrim has finished collecting answers.
Then the cake turns into a courtesy. Tripitaka offers it to the old man; the old man refuses on the grounds that his own tea and rice have not yet been served. Both moves are compulsory and both men know it. A guest cannot eat before he has been fed, and a host cannot accept food from a guest he has not yet fed.
There is a quiet joke underneath the etiquette that the novel never points out. The object being passed round with all this ceremony was bought a minute ago with a coin that is actually a monkey's hair. Elaborate manners are being performed over a fraudulent purchase, and nobody in the room is in any position to notice. Tripitaka, meanwhile, has been told not to panic and given something to eat, which is the whole of the management his disciple thinks he needs.