Canonical Classics ← 第七十一回
第七十一回
xíngzhějiǎmíngxiángguàihǒu
guānyīnxiànxiàngyāowáng

Pilgrim Under a False Name Subdues the Monster Hou · Guanyin Shows Her Image and Puts Down the Fiend King

從頭至尾
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

從頭至尾 From Beginning To End

yòubiànhuàtōuchūduìxìngguānyīnjiāngshōuyòushuōchāifèngzhī。……」cóngtóuzhìwěishuōlebiànguójūnchénnèiwàiréngǎnxièchēngzànyòubiànhuàtōuchūduìxìngguānyīnjiāngshōuyòushuōchāifèngzhī。……」cóngtóuzhìwěishuōlebiànguójūnchénnèiwàiréngǎnxièchēngzàn


逐句解 Line by line

yòubiànhuàtōuchūduì yòubiànhuàtōuchūduì

"Then I changed shape again, stole out once more, and met him in battle.

Ten characters for the escape, the disguise and the fight — three clauses of three and four characters, the shortest run in the summary.

xìngguānyīnjiāngshōuyòushuōchāifèngzhī。……」 xìngguānyīnjiāngshōuyòushuōchāifèngzhī。……」

"By good fortune I met the Bodhisattva Guanyin, who took him back, and she also told me the reason for the parting of the phoenixes …"

is jiāng, the disposal marker. 拆鳳 is the fifth and last time the phrase appears in the chapter — the queen sang it, the Bodhisattva pronounced it, and Wukong has now used it three times. The row of dots and the closing bracket end the speech: the storyteller declines to write the rest of it out.

cóngtóuzhìwěishuōlebiàn cóngtóuzhìwěishuōlebiàn

and so from beginning to end he told it all through in detail.

從頭至尾 is a set phrase, from head to tail, and it stands in for the speech the storyteller has just declined to finish. takes before the falling tone of .

guójūnchénnèiwàiréngǎnxièchēngzàn guójūnchénnèiwàiréngǎnxièchēngzàn

In the whole kingdom, ruler and ministers, inside and out, there was not one who did not give thanks and praise.

A double negative — 無一人不, not one who did not — which is emphatic in Chinese as in English. takes before the level tone of .


總評 Commentary

The ellipsis is the interesting thing on this page. 拆鳳之故。……」 — the source puts a row of dots inside the quotation marks and then closes them, and follows with 從頭至尾,細說了一遍, he told it from head to tail in detail. The storyteller is explicitly refusing to repeat himself.

It is a device the novel uses often and it is worth noticing here, because the reader has just spent six thousand characters on the events being summarised. The ellipsis is a courtesy to the audience of a storyteller who knows they were listening.

拆鳳 closes its account here, at five occurrences. The queen sang it in her lament not knowing it was a sentence; the Bodhisattva pronounced it as the sentence; Wukong explained it to the queen, and now explains it to the court. The same four characters have travelled the length of the chapter.