柴扉緊閉 The Brushwood Gate Barred
行者指道：「那樹叢裡不是個人家？我們去借宿一宵，明早走路。」長老欣然促馬，至莊門外下馬，只見那柴扉緊閉。長老敲門道：「開門，開門。」裡面有一老者，手拖藜杖，足踏蒲鞋，頭頂烏巾，身穿素服，開了門，便問：「是甚人在此大呼小叫？」行者指道：「那树丛里不是个人家？我们去借宿一宵，明早走路。」长老欣然促马，至庄门外下马，只见那柴扉紧闭。长老敲门道：「开门，开门。」里面有一老者，手拖藜杖，足踏蒲鞋，头顶乌巾，身穿素服，开了门，便问：「是甚人在此大呼小叫？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim pointed and said, "Is that not a household there among the trees?
那 is nà, "that" — Pilgrim is pointing. The question is the rhetorical kind that expects agreement, not information.
"Let us beg a night's shelter there and take the road again in the morning."
借宿 — literally "to borrow a night's sleep" — is the ordinary polite way of asking a stranger to put you up.
The Elder gladly urged his horse on, dismounted outside the farmstead gate, and found the brushwood door shut fast.
柴扉, a gate made of sticks, is shorthand in Chinese writing for a poor or rustic house, the way a thatched roof is in English. 促馬 is to hurry a horse along.
The Elder knocked and called, "Open the gate! Open the gate!"
The doubled shout is a fixture of arrival scenes. It reads less as impatience than as the sound of knocking, written down.
Inside was an old man, trailing a goosefoot staff, rush sandals on his feet, a black kerchief on his head and plain clothes on his back. He opened the gate and asked at once, "Who is it out here bawling and shouting?"
Staff, shoes, headcloth, gown: this book introduces people by cataloguing what they have on, always working in that order — hand, foot, head, body. 甚 is the question-word shén, "what" or "who," not the shèn that means "extremely." The same character will turn up in the other sense before this scene is over.
The approach comes in four moves — pointing, riding up, dismounting, knocking — and each gets a clause of its own. The barred gate at the end of the third is the first thing in the chapter to say no to them.
The old man is assembled entirely out of his wardrobe. Nothing is said about his face and nothing needs to be: a goosefoot staff, rush sandals and plain clothes place him exactly.
His opening line is a complaint rather than a question. He does not ask who has come; he asks who is making the racket. That sets the friction of the whole next scene, in which he tells them repeatedly that they cannot go on.