人油炒煉 What Was In The Pans
此時有三個女子陪著，言來語去，論說些因緣。那四個到廚中撩衣斂袖，炊火刷鍋。你道他安排的是些甚麼東西？原來是人油炒煉，人肉煎熬：熬得黑糊充作麵觔樣子，剜的人腦煎作豆腐塊片。此时有三个女子陪着，言来语去，论说些因缘。那四个到厨中撩衣敛袖，炊火刷锅。你道他安排的是些甚么东西？原来是人油炒炼，人肉煎熬：熬得黑糊充作面觔样子，剜的人脑煎作豆腐块片。
逐句解 Line by line
Three of the women stayed to keep him company, talking this way and that, discussing points of doctrine.
著 is zhe, the marker of something going on — sitting with him, keeping it up. 因緣 is a real Buddhist term, the chain of cause and condition by which things come about, and they are holding a competent conversation about it while the other four are in the kitchen.
The other four went into the kitchen, hitched up their clothes and pulled back their sleeves, lit the fire and scoured the pan.
撩衣斂袖 — clothes lifted, sleeves gathered. It is the standard four-character phrase for getting down to physical work, and it is the same gesture anybody makes before cooking. 中 is zhōng, inside.
And what do you suppose they were preparing?
The storyteller turns to the room again. 甚 is shén, the question word. He asks because he is about to tell you, and because the pause before the answer is the point.
It was human fat rendered down and human flesh boiled: cooked to a black paste and passed off as wheat gluten, and human brains gouged out and fried into squares of beancurd.
得 is de here, joining the boiling to what it produced — cooked until black and pasty. 麵觔 is wheat gluten, the standard meat substitute in a temple kitchen; 豆腐 is beancurd, the other one. That is the horror working: the two foods being counterfeited are precisely the two a monk is allowed. 腐 takes the light fu that modern standard gives 豆腐 — one of a small handful of everyday words where the second syllable has genuinely worn down, alongside 尾巴 and 意思.
The book waits until the guest is seated, fed a proverb and settled into a conversation about doctrine, and then tells you what is in the pans. The placement is the whole effect.
What makes it land is the counterfeiting. Wheat gluten and beancurd are not random foods — they are the two staples of a vegetarian kitchen, the things a monastery cook makes so that monks can eat without breaking the precept against killing. The kitchen here is manufacturing exact replicas of both out of the one substance a monk may least eat.
And three of them are sitting with him discussing cause and condition while it happens. That is not a lapse in the writing. The doctrine talk is real, competent and simultaneous with the cooking, and the chapter is quite deliberate about showing you both at once.