肩膊掮扇 A Fan Upon The Shoulder
話表牛魔王趕上孫大聖，只見他肩膊上掮著那柄芭蕉扇，怡顏悅色而行。魔王大驚道：「猢猻原來把運用的方法兒也叨餂得來了。我若當面問他索取，他定然不與；倘若搧我一扇，要去十萬八千里遠，卻不遂了他意？话表牛魔王赶上孙大圣，只见他肩膊上掮着那柄芭蕉扇，怡颜悦色而行。魔王大惊道：「猢狲原来把运用的方法儿也叨餂得来了。我若当面问他索取，他定然不与；倘若搧我一扇，要去十万八千里远，却不遂了他意？
逐句解 Line by line
The tale relates that the Bull Demon King, overtaking the Great Sage Sun, saw him bearing that banana-leaf fan upon his shoulder and going along with a pleased face and a cheerful colour.
The chase from the end of the last chapter closes in the first clause, and what the Bull Demon King sees is the fan. 掮 qián is the exact verb for carrying something balanced on one shoulder — not 擔, a pole across both, and not 負, on the back. Note also that the chapter opens with 話表 and not the usual 話說, the same variant Chapter 59 used; 話說 does not appear anywhere in this chapter. 著 is the zhe that keeps an action going — he is bearing the fan as he walks — not zhù, the literary verb meaning to compose.
The Demon King, greatly startled, said: "So the ape has wheedled the method of working it out of her as well."
The Bull works out at once how much has been taken from him: not just the fan, but the trick for working it. 叨餂 tāo tiǎn is a lovely, nasty little word for prising a thing out of someone by talking at them, and both halves have to be argued. 康熙 lists 叨 as 土刀切 and 他刀切, 音滔 — tāo — glossing it 同饕 and, from 說文, 貪也, greedy. There is no dāo reading there at all; that belongs to the later 叨叨, to prattle. 餂 is 他點切, 音忝, which 韻會 glosses 鉤取也, to hook out, quoting 孟子: 是以言餂之也 — he hooks it out of him with talk. So 餂 already carries the talking, and 叨 supplies the greed. Angling with an appetite. In 方法兒 the 兒 is the genuine curled ending, er, against the full ér of a word like 孩兒.
"If I ask him for it to his face and demand it back, he will certainly not give it up;"
Option one, ruled out. 當面 is 當 meaning facing or in the presence of, dāng — and the Bull will use the phrase twice more before the chapter ends, once of himself and once of the disguise he is about to put on. 與 here is the verb "to give".
"and if he fans me but once, I shall be carried a hundred and eight thousand lǐ away — would that not be gratifying his wish exactly?"
Option two, ruled out, and for a funny reason: hitting him with the fan would send him exactly where he wants to go. Watch the chapter's strict split between 搧 shān, the act of fanning, and 扇 shàn, the fan itself and a count of strokes. Both stand in this one clause. 遂 is suì, to gratify or bring about — not suí, which belongs only to the medical phrase 半身不遂. Lifting 遂 to the falling tone lifts 不 with it, to bú.
The chapter opens without a pause for breath. Chapter 60 ended with the Great Sage walking home along the old road, a fan four chǐ across on his shoulder that he could not fold up, and the Bull Demon King setting off after him in his undershirt, on foot, carrying his first wife's swords. That pursuit closes in this chapter's first clause, and the first thing the Bull sees is the fan he cannot miss.
His reasoning is worth following, because it is the reasoning of a man who has lost everything and is working out what he has left. He cannot ask for the fan: he would be refused. He cannot take it by force: one stroke would put him a hundred and eight thousand lǐ away, which is precisely what his enemy wants. Force and demand are both shut off. What remains is the one method the Great Sage has been using all day.
There is a precision in 卻不遂了他意 that English cannot quite hold. 遂 here is to carry another person's 意, his intention, through to completion. The Bull sees that the obvious counter-move would not merely fail — it would finish the job his enemy started. It is the same recognition the Great Sage has been trading on all along, and the Bull has reached it one move too late.