金杯落地 The Golden Cup Strikes The Ground
行者聞說，將金杯連酒望空一撇，噹的一聲響喨，那個金杯落地。君王著了忙，躬身施禮道：「神僧，恕罪，恕罪，是寡人不是了。禮當請上殿拜謝，只因有這方便酒在此，故就奉耳。神僧卻把杯子撇了，卻不是有見怪之意？」行者闻说，将金杯连酒望空一撇，当的一声响喨，那个金杯落地。君王着了忙，躬身施礼道：「神僧，恕罪，恕罪，是寡人不是了。礼当请上殿拜谢，只因有这方便酒在此，故就奉耳。神僧却把杯子撇了，却不是有见怪之意？」
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Pilgrim took the golden goblet, wine and all, and flung it up into the empty air; there was a ringing clang, and the goblet came down on the ground.
將 here is the little word that hauls an object forward in front of its verb — jiāng, not the jiàng of a general. 噹的一聲 puts the noise before the event and the narrative obediently follows: clang first, cup landing second. And 撇 is the giveaway — to fling something away with a flick of the wrist, which is emphatically the wrong verb for a man returning a gift.
The sovereign was thrown into a fluster and bent from the waist in apology: "Divine monk, pardon the fault, pardon the fault. The wrong is mine."
著 in 著了忙 is zháo, the reading for a state you fall into rather than one you keep up — the fluster arrives all at once. 是寡人不是了 turns on two different jobs for 是 in five characters: the first is the ordinary is, the second is half of 不是, a fault. Roughly, it is me who is the one at fault.
"By rights I should have asked you up into the hall and given you thanks there with due ceremony. It was only because this wine stood ready to hand that I offered it where we were."
當 is dāng, ought — the king is reciting the protocol he believes he has broken. 方便酒 is wine that happened to be to hand rather than wine set out for the purpose, which is exactly the distinction between opening something for a guest and pouring them what was already on the table. 耳 ends the sentence with a shrug: that is all it was.
"And now the divine monk has flung the cup away. Is that not a sign that offence has been taken?"
見怪 is to take a thing amiss, and the king asks it as a question he has already answered for himself. 卻 appears twice in sixteen characters, first adversative and then interrogative — but, and then surely-not.
The joke is a misreading, and the king makes it. A cup thrown upwards with the wine still in it is not a cup refused, but it looks exactly like one — and he has already told himself his thanks were inadequate. He supplies the insult himself, out of his own sense of falling short.
The proportions record the panic. He spent twenty-nine characters offering the wine and spends fifty-eight taking the blame for it, precisely twice as many. Inside those fifty-eight he apologises, accepts fault, explains the protocol he failed to follow, gives his reason for failing, and only then asks the question. The question comes last because he does not really want it answered.
Notice what he does not ask. The fire was announced one sentence before he began, and Wukong threw the cup on hearing it. The connection is sitting there and the king never reaches for it, because he is too busy being at fault.