遊蜂錯認真 The Bees Would Be Fooled
長老見那人家沒個男兒，只有四個女子，不敢進去，將身立定，閃在喬林之下。只見那女子一個個：长老见那人家没个男儿，只有四个女子，不敢进去，将身立定，闪在乔林之下。只见那女子一个个：
逐句解 Line by line
The Elder, seeing that the household held not one man but only four women, did not dare go in. He held himself still and slipped in under the tall trees.
長 says zhǎng here — 長老, the senior one, the Elder. One passage ago the identical character was cháng, long, in a long stream. 男兒 takes ér as a word in its own right, a male person, not a sound tacked on the end. 將 is jiāng, the word that takes hold of an object before doing something to it — he takes his own body and plants it still.
He saw only that those women, every one of them —
A tag fused to its own sentence, and it hands straight over to the poem. 一個個 means each and all — he is not looking at one of them.
Chamber hearts as firm as stone, orchid natures glad as spring.
The opening pair claims they are chaste and gentle, which is the standard compliment and, here, a straight lie. 似 is sì, the comparison word — like, as.
Tender faces set off by red cloud, vermilion lips evenly touched with crimson.
紅霞, red cloud, for a blush, and 絳脂, crimson paste, for rouge. The poem is describing make-up in the vocabulary of weather and minerals, which is what this form does.
Moth eyebrows, a small moon laid crosswise; cicada tresses, fresh cloud piled high.
蛾眉 and 蟬鬢 are both stock: moth-feeler brows, thin and curved, and hair dressed in the fine layered shape of a cicada's wing. Both have been compliments for a thousand years before this book.
Let them stand among the flowers, and the roving bees would take them for the real thing.
The closing line is the best joke in the poem and the reader is not meant to get it yet. 錯認真 means to mistake something for genuine — the bees would come to these women as if they were flowers. Which is precisely the trade these four are in: looking like the thing that draws the creature in. 間 is jiān, among, marking a space between.
Tripitaka does exactly the right thing and it makes no difference. He counts the household, finds four women and no man, decides it would be improper to walk in, and hides in the trees instead. A monk's propriety, correctly applied, leaves him standing in a wood watching four strangers.
The poem that follows is a regulated one — eight lines of five characters, and this time the rhyme is exact: spring, evenly, fresh, real, all landing on the same sound in all four positions. Set beside the loose rhapsody a moment ago, the contrast is deliberate. The scenery gets sprawling ornamental verse; the women get the strict form.
Every compliment in it is conventional and every one is wrong. Hearts firm as stone, natures like orchids, the whole vocabulary of chaste womanhood, spent on seven spider-spirits who will shortly strip and get into a bathing pool. The last line half-admits it: the bees are fooled. So is the man in the trees.