名喚翠雲 The Mountain Called Cuiyun
行者道：「那山坐落何處？喚甚地名？有幾多里數？等我問他要扇子去。」老者道：「那山在西南方，名喚翠雲山。山中有一仙洞，名喚芭蕉洞。我這裡眾信人等去拜仙山，往回要走一月，計有一千四百五六十里。」行者道：「那山坐落何处？唤甚地名？有几多里数？等我问他要扇子去。」老者道：「那山在西南方，名唤翠云山。山中有一仙洞，名唤芭蕉洞。我这里众信人等去拜仙山，往回要走一月，计有一千四百五六十里。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, 'Where does that mountain lie? What is the place called? How many lǐ is it?'
Three bare questions fired off together, which the source separates with its own question marks and which are rejoined here as one parallel run. 甚 is the questioning shén; 數 in 里數 is shù, a count.
'Let me go and ask her for the fan.'
扇子 with the light unstressed zi on the end. This is Pilgrim's plan, announced before he has been told the distance, the name of the place, or who actually owns the thing.
The old man said, 'That mountain lies to the southwest, and it is called Mount Cuiyun.'
翠雲山, Emerald Cloud Mountain. The old man answers the three questions in the order they were asked, which is the courtesy of a careful informant.
'In the mountain there is an immortal's cave, and it is called the Banana-Leaf Cave.'
芭蕉洞 takes its name from the fan, or the fan from the cave; the novel never says which. Living in a cave is the standard arrangement for immortals and demons alike, and nothing in the name yet tells you which this is.
'When the faithful from hereabouts go to worship at that immortal mountain, the journey out and back takes a month — some fourteen hundred and fifty or sixty lǐ by reckoning.'
眾信人等, "the whole body of the faithful," confirms what the list of offerings implied: this is a congregation, not a set of neighbours. And notice how the distance is given — 五六十, fifty or sixty — with the vagueness of a real report rather than the round numbers a novel uses when it is inventing.
Pilgrim asks three questions at once — where, what is it called, how far — and the old man answers all three in order. It is an efficient exchange, and it is also the moment the chapter acquires its map: Mount Cuiyun to the southwest, the Banana-Leaf Cave inside it, fourteen hundred and fifty lǐ there and back.
The figure is worth attention for the way it is given. Not a round number but 一千四百五六十 — a thousand four hundred and fifty or sixty — which is how a man reports a distance he knows from other people's journeys rather than his own. The same mixture of precision and vagueness marks the month it takes and the congregation that makes the trip.
Against all of which Pilgrim has already announced his plan, before hearing any of it: let me go and ask her for the fan. The passage sets the community's scale — ten years of offerings, a month on the road, a whole body of believers — beside one sentence from somebody for whom none of it is an obstacle.