黃金甲 Helm and Golden Mail
只見：只见：
逐句解 Line by line
He saw only this:
Two characters, the shortest stretch in the chapter, and the first scene-setting tag here to stand entirely on its own. The three earlier descriptions were all introduced by a phrase tucked into the end of a prose sentence; this one gets a line to itself, which slows the reader down before the portrait starts.
On his head a helm of tempered iron, water-ground to a silver brightness; on his body a suit of golden mail, brocade-worked and threaded with floss; on his feet a pair of deerskin boots, curl-toed and pale-soled;
A single line of three matched members, running head, body, feet, each with its counting word and a five-character description. 一 takes yì before 頂 and 雙 and yí before the falling tone of 副. 水磨 is ground smooth with water and abrasive, the finish that gives armour its shine.
about his waist a lion-and-barbarian belt of three plaited strands of gathered silk.
攢 is cuán, to gather into a bundle, not the zǎn of saving up. 獅蠻帶 is a belt whose plaques carry lions and barbarian figures — a real piece of Song and Ming military dress rather than a poetic invention.
A pair of eyes with light like clear mirrors; two brows glowing as a red rainbow.
The line turns from what he is wearing to what he is. 似 is held at sì throughout this project.
A mouth like a basin of blood; teeth ranged like plates of bronze.
Four characters to a half-line, the tightest metre in the piece, and the only lines in it describing something a man could not take off.
The sound of his roar shakes the mountain spirits with dread; the majesty of his movement throws the wicked ghosts into panic.
The couplet moves from what he looks like to what the sight of him does to onlookers, which is the conventional turn at the end of a warrior portrait.
Within the Four Seas he has a name, and is called Confounder of the World; in the western quarter he is styled the Demon King of Great Strength.
稱 is chēng, to be called, and 號 is hào, to be styled. 混世 names him as one who throws the age into confusion. And 大力 hands back the title the Local Spirit gave him in the chapter's opening line, closing the loop on the question that started it.
The portrait is built to a strict scheme: first what he wears, from helm down to boots and then the belt; then what he is, eyes and brows and mouth and teeth; then the effect he has on anyone watching; and last what he is called. Equipment, body, effect, name. The sequence is conventional and the novel follows it without deviation, which is itself informative — this is a formal presentation, and the Bull Demon King is being introduced with full honours.
Set against the two portraits earlier in the chapter, the contrast is deliberate. The Jade-Faced Princess was described through allusion — Wang Zhaojun, the woman of Chu, Zhuo Wenjun, Xue Tao — and through fabric and ornament. The Bull King is described through metal. Iron, gold, bronze; ground, threaded, plaited, ranked. There is not a single literary allusion in the whole piece.
The closing line answers the chapter's opening. Chapter sixty begins with the Local Spirit saying that the King of Great Strength is none other than the Bull Demon King, and this poem ends by naming him with both titles in one couplet. Between those two points the novel has taken him from a name in somebody else's sentence to a figure standing armed in a doorway.