倒栽蔥 Face Down And Upside Down
左邊去，一個面磕地；右邊去，一個倒栽蔥；急轉身，又跌了個嘴搵地；忙爬起，又跌了個豎蜻蜓。左边去，一个面磕地；右边去，一个倒栽葱；急转身，又跌了个嘴揾地；忙爬起，又跌了个竖蜻蜓。
逐句解 Line by line
Go left, and it was a faceful of ground;
面磕地 — face knocking the earth. Eight characters, and the sentence is built to be answered by the next one.
go right, and it was an upended leek;
倒栽蔥, a leek planted upside down, is still the ordinary Chinese for going head over heels. The vegetable is doing the work an English speaker gets from turning turtle.
turn round in a hurry, and he came down with his mouth in the dirt;
嘴搵地 — mouth pressed into the ground. Third fall, third body part.
scramble up quickly, and down he went in a standing dragonfly.
豎蜻蜓, a dragonfly stood on end, is a headstand — the insect balanced vertically on its nose. Fourth fall, and the chapter is naming them the way it named the kickball moves.
Four falls in thirty-six characters, each with its own name, each built on the same two-part shape: try to move this way, land like that.
The names are the pleasure of it. An upended leek for going head over heels — still current Chinese. A standing dragonfly for a headstand, the insect balanced on its nose. The book that gave two hundred characters to the named moves of a ball game is using the same instinct on a pig falling over.
It looks like verse and it is not. Five short parallel members in a row, each scanning neatly, and the source marks none of them as poetry. That distinction matters here: this is prose that has picked up a rhythm, which is a thing this author does when something is funny.