遞與扇子 He Hands Over The Fan
那女子與老孫結了一場乾夫妻,是老孫設法騙將來的。」牛王道:「卻是生受了。哥哥勞碌太甚,可把扇子我拿。」孫大聖那知真假,也慮不及此,遂將扇子遞與他。那女子与老孙结了一场干夫妻,是老孙设法骗将来的。」牛王道:「却是生受了。哥哥劳碌太甚,可把扇子我拿。」孙大圣那知真假,也虑不及此,遂将扇子递与他。
逐句解 Line by line
"That woman and old Sun made a dry match of it for a while, and old Sun contrived a way to cheat it out of her."
乾夫妻 is a marriage in name only, and 乾 takes gān — the "dry, bare, nominal" sense of 乾魚 and 乾淨, not the qián of 乾坤, heaven and earth. 女子 keeps the full zǐ, against the light zi of 扇子 twice in the next line. In 騙將來, 將 is jiāng.
The Bull King said: "That was hard work indeed. Elder brother has laboured far too much — let me carry the fan for you."
The trap, and it is beautifully sprung: not a demand but an offer of help. 生受 is to be put to trouble on someone else's behalf, said in sympathy. 甚 is the intensifier shèn, "excessively", not the question word shén of 甚麼.
How was the Great Sage to know true from false? His thought did not reach so far, and he thereupon handed the fan over to him.
那 here is the rhetorical one, standing for 哪 — "how was he to know?" It is the harder of the two non-pointing sites in these passages to spot, because it sits in front of a verb rather than in front of 裡. 遂 needs no correction at this site, having been wrong five passages earlier before 了.
The request is beautifully judged. It is not a demand, and it is not a trick that has to succeed on its own strength — it is an offer of help, framed as concern for a tired man, made by someone who has already established himself as a brother sent out to meet him. 哥哥勞碌太甚 gives the Great Sage a reason to hand the fan over that flatters him while he does it.
那知真假 is the storyteller's judgement, and he puts it as a question rather than a verdict. The Great Sage is not being stupid here, and the book does not say he is. He is a man to whom no reason to look has presented itself, which is exactly the condition the whole deception was built to preserve.
也慮不及此 does the real work of the sentence. His thinking did not reach this far — not that he thought and thought wrongly, but that the thought was never started. It is the same failure the proverb named two passages ago, now stated without the figure of speech: the cat that has won does not look behind it.