鐘磬悠揚 Bells And Chimes Carrying Far
唐三藏一見心驚。孫行者神通廣大，你看他一條金箍棒，哮吼一聲，嚇過了狼蟲虎豹，剖開路，引師父直上高山。行過嶺頭，下西平處，忽見祥光藹藹，彩霧紛紛，有一所樓臺殿閣，隱隱的鐘磬悠揚。三藏道：「徒弟們，看是個甚麼去處？」行者擡頭，用手搭涼篷，仔細觀看，那壁廂好個所在。唐三藏一见心惊。孙行者神通广大，你看他一条金箍棒，哮吼一声，吓过了狼虫虎豹，剖开路，引师父直上高山。行过岭头，下西平处，忽见祥光蔼蔼，彩雾纷纷，有一所楼台殿阁，隐隐的钟磬悠扬。三藏道：「徒弟们，看是个甚么去处？」行者擡头，用手搭凉篷，仔细观看，那壁厢好个所在。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka of Tang took one look and his heart shook.
Seven characters, and they undo eight couplets of scenery. 一見 is the whole of Tripitaka's response to that mountain: he looked at it once. Remember the number, because Pilgrim is about to look at something properly.
Sun the Pilgrim's powers were vast. See him with that gold-banded cudgel: one roar, and wolves, serpents, tigers and leopards were frightened off. He split a road open and led his master straight up the high mountain.
One roar and the predators are gone — no fight, no cudgel-work worth describing, which is the point. The ordinary dangers of the road are beneath him. 哮 reads xiào throughout this project, and 你看他 is the storyteller swivelling to face his audience mid-sentence — a leftover from telling this aloud, kept in the written text because it still works.
They crossed the ridge-crest, and on the level ground below to the west there was suddenly an auspicious glow lying soft and thick, and coloured mists in confusion, and a range of towers and terraces, halls and pavilions, with bells and stone chimes carrying faintly on the air.
Every single word of this is favourable, and that is the trap. Three doubled words in one sentence — 藹藹, 紛紛, 隱隱 — and then 悠揚 to carry the bells off into the distance, which is the exact register the novel keeps for a holy place.
Tripitaka said, "Disciples, look — what sort of place is that?"
He asks instead of assuming, which is more careful than he manages a few hundred characters later. 去處 is the plain vernacular for somewhere one might go, and it passes no judgement either way.
Pilgrim raised his head, made a shade of his hand, and looked carefully. Over on that side it was a fine place indeed.
搭涼篷 is literally to rig an awning — the flat hand held up over the eyes — and it is the gesture the novel uses when Pilgrim settles down to look at something properly. Tripitaka glanced; this is the opposite. 仔 reads zǐ in 仔細, not the zǎi of a young animal.
The whole passage turns on one verb apiece. Tripitaka 一見 and is frightened; Pilgrim 仔細觀看 and is not. The novel has been building that contrast since the argument about how high the mountain was, and it is about to pay it off badly.
Notice how little Pilgrim actually does in between. One roar and the road is clear — no fight described, because wolves and tigers are not the difficulty. Whatever is waiting at the shining halls will have to be something else entirely.
The monastery arrives wrapped in good omens: auspicious light, coloured cloud, the sound of bells. Nothing in the description is false, and that is exactly the trouble. The place really does look like the thing it is imitating.