水底相逢 Meeting in the Water
那大聖變魚兒，順水正游，忽見一隻飛禽：似青鷂，毛片不青；似鷺鷥，頂上無纓；似老鸛，腿又不紅：「想是二郎變化了等我哩！」急轉頭，打個花就走。二郎看見道：「打花的魚兒：似鯉魚，尾巴不紅；似鱖魚，花鱗不見；似黑魚，頭上無星；似魴魚，鰓上無針。他怎麼見了我就回去了？必然是那猴變的。」趕上來，刷的啄一嘴。那大聖就攛出水中，一變，變作一條水蛇，游近岸，鑽入草中。二郎因嗛他不著，他見水響中，見一條蛇攛出去，認得是大聖。急轉身，又變了一隻朱繡頂的灰鶴，伸著一個長嘴，與一把尖頭鐵鉗子相似，徑來吃這水蛇。水蛇跳一跳，又變做一隻花鴇，木木樗樗的，立在蓼汀之上。二郎見他變得低賤，（花鴇乃鳥中至賤至淫之物，不拘鸞、鳳、鷹、鴉，都與交群）故此不去攏傍。即現原身，走將去，取過彈弓，拽滿，一彈子把他打個躘踵。那大圣变鱼儿，顺水正游，忽见一只飞禽：似青鹞，毛片不青；似鹭鸶，顶上无缨；似老鹳，腿又不红：「想是二郎变化了等我哩！」急转头，打个花就走。二郎看见道：「打花的鱼儿：似鲤鱼，尾巴不红；似鳜鱼，花鳞不见；似黑鱼，头上无星；似鲂鱼，鳃上无针。他怎么见了我就回去了？必然是那猴变的。」赶上来，刷的啄一嘴。那大圣就撺出水中，一变，变作一条水蛇，游近岸，钻入草中。二郎因嗛他不着，他见水响中，见一条蛇撺出去，认得是大圣。急转身，又变了一只朱绣顶的灰鹤，伸着一个长嘴，与一把尖头铁钳子相似，径来吃这水蛇。水蛇跳一跳，又变做一只花鸨，木木樗樗的，立在蓼汀之上。二郎见他变得低贱，（花鸨乃鸟中至贱至淫之物，不拘鸾、凤、鹰、鸦，都与交群）故此不去拢傍。即现原身，走将去，取过弹弓，拽满，一弹子把他打个躘踵。
逐句解 Line by line
The Great Sage, now a fish, was swimming with the current when he suddenly spotted a bird of prey:
The chase goes underwater, and the point of view switches to the fish. Something is hovering overhead, and the monkey — suspicious by nature — starts going over it feature by feature.
like a blue sparrowhawk, but its feathers weren't blue; like an egret, but it had no crest atop its head; like an old stork, but its legs again weren't red:
A connoisseur's checklist of waterbirds: 青鷂, blue sparrowhawk; 鷺鷥 (lù sī), egret; 老鸛 (lǎo guàn), stork. Each one fails on a specific diagnostic mark — wrong feathers, no crest, wrong leg colour. The monkey knows his birds far too well to be fooled by an approximation.
"This must be Erlang, transformed and lying in wait for me!" He turned his head sharply, made a splash, and fled.
打個花, made a swirl, a splash — the tell-tale ripple of a startled fish. He is right about the bird, and his being right is exactly what gives him away.
Erlang saw it and said, "That fish that made the splash:
Now the mirror image: Erlang runs his own connoisseur's checklist over the suspicious fish. The two halves of this passage are built to rhyme, and each adversary is scrutinising the other's counterfeit with the same expert eye.
like a carp, but its tail isn't red; like a mandarin-fish, but it shows no mottled scales; like a snakehead, but there are no stars on its head; like a bream, but no spines on its gills.
The matching list, this time of fish: 鯉魚 carp, 鱖魚 (guì yú) mandarin fish, 黑魚 snakehead, 魴魚 (fáng yú) bream. Erlang, like the monkey, has spent enough time near water to know when something is not quite a fish.
Why would it turn back the moment it saw me? It must be that monkey, transformed."
Again he reasons from behaviour rather than appearance, and the logic is unanswerable: an ordinary fish would not flee a bird it had no reason to fear. It was the running that gave him away, not the shape.
He swooped down and, with a flick, stabbed at it with his beak.
啄一嘴, pecked once (啄 is zhuó). The osprey strikes and just misses — enough to drive the monkey into his next form.
The Great Sage shot up out of the water, transformed, became a water-snake, swam to the bank, and slipped into the grass.
攛出, darted out, shot up (攛 is cuān). Water is no longer safe, so he takes the bank: out of the stream, into the grass, from one element's edge to another.
Erlang, having failed to snap him up, saw amid the splashing a snake dart out, and knew it was the Great Sage.
嗛他不著, failed to seize him in the beak (著 is zháo, marking the failure of the attempt). The miss lasts about a second. The splash of the escape is itself the clue.
Quickly he turned and transformed into a grey crane with a red-embroidered crown, thrusting out a long beak like a pair of sharp-tipped iron pincers, and came straight to eat the water-snake.
A 灰鶴, grey crane, is a snake-eater, and its beak is likened to 鐵鉗子, iron pincers. The chain of predator and prey continues without a link missing: whatever the monkey turns into, Erlang turns into the thing that eats it.
The water-snake gave a wriggle and turned into a bustard, and stood there dull and stupid on a smartweed sandbar.
花鴇 (huā bǎo) is a bustard; 木木樗樗 (mù mù chū chū) is blank and blockish, standing about stupidly; 蓼汀 (liǎo tīng) is a sandbar grown over with smartweed. Running short of clever forms, the monkey has taken a stupid one — and it costs him.
Erlang saw that he had turned into something base — the bustard being the most base and licentious of birds, mating indiscriminately with phoenix, simurgh, hawk, or crow alike — and so would not go near it.
An authorial aside on the bustard's reputation, and the novel delivers it with relish: the bird will couple with anything that has feathers, noble or common — 鸞 simurgh, 鳳 phoenix, 鷹 hawk, 鴉 crow. Erlang is too fastidious to take so vile a shape, and that is the monkey's miscalculation. He has made himself contemptible without making himself safe.
He resumed his true form, walked over, took up his pellet-bow, drew it full, and with a single pellet knocked the bustard sprawling.
拽滿, drew the bow to the full (拽 is zhuài); 躘踵 (lóng zhǒng) is to stagger or sprawl. Rather than match a base form with a baser one, Erlang simply becomes himself again and shoots. The pellet-bow from the portrait-rhapsody, hanging at his waist for six passages, finally goes off.
The transformation-contest reaches its most artful pitch here, in a pair of mirror-image set-pieces. First the monkey-fish, suspicious of a hovering bird, runs through a connoisseur's checklist of waterfowl — like a sparrowhawk, but the feathers are not blue; like an egret, but there is no crest; like a stork, but the legs are not red — and concludes it must be Erlang in disguise. Then, in perfect symmetry, Erlang the osprey runs the same kind of checklist over the suspicious fish — like a carp, but the tail is not red; like a mandarin fish, but no mottled scales — and concludes it must be the monkey. The two halves rhyme exactly, and the joke is that each adversary is undone less by the other's sight than by his own behaviour: it is the fish's panicked flight, and the bird's hovering menace, that give the game away. They know each other by conduct, not by looks.
This is a deepening of the contest's logic. In the earlier bird-chase, Erlang's piercing eye simply saw through every disguise; here, where both wear convincing animal forms, sight alone is not enough, and the duel becomes one of inference. Each reasons from anomaly — the wrong-coloured tail, the unaccountable flight — to the truth beneath the form. The monkey's cunning is now fully met by Erlang's, and the long advantage begins to tell against the fugitive: running short of clever shapes, he is reduced at last to a bustard, a bird proverbial for stupidity and indiscriminate lust. Wú Chéng'ēn pauses for a wry authorial aside on the creature's vileness, and the choice proves a blunder — Erlang, too fastidious to take so base a form, simply resumes himself and reaches for his pellet-bow.
The bustard episode is a small comic turning point. Through the whole chase the monkey has stayed a step ahead by choosing forms Erlang has to answer in kind, each transformation forcing a counter-transformation. By becoming something too contemptible to chase, he breaks that pattern in what looks like his own favour — and loses by it, because now Erlang need not become anything at all. He stands in his own shape and shoots. The pellet that knocks the bustard sprawling (躘踵) ends the contest of shapes and sends the monkey, in the next passage, to his most audacious disguise yet: a roadside shrine, with his tail for a flagpole. In the allegorical reading the lesson is that the protean mind, for all its agility, will eventually overreach into self-abasement; the very restlessness that made it hard to catch is what finally betrays it. (The catalogue of birds and fish draws on close observation of Chinese country life; for the bustard's literary reputation, the aside speaks for itself.)