白胖和尚 A Fat White Monk
仙童道：「適間有四個和尚進來，師父教來看茶。」女怪道：「可有個白胖和尚？」道：「有。」又問：「可有個長嘴大耳朵的？」道：「有。」仙童道：「适间有四个和尚进来，师父教来看茶。」女怪道：「可有个白胖和尚？」道：「有。」又问：「可有个长嘴大耳朵的？」道：「有。」
逐句解 Line by line
"Four monks came in just now," said the lad, "and the master told me to serve tea."
適間 is early vernacular for just now, a moment ago — 間 here is jiān, a stretch of time. 教 is jiào, the causative: told me to, had me. It is one of fifteen in this chapter and every one of them is this reading, never jiāo, to teach.
"Was there a fat white monk?" asked the woman-monster.
She does not ask their names, their order or their business. She asks what they look like — and 白胖, pale and plump, is Tripitaka to the life. The novel's shorthand for him is always physical and always slightly appetising, which in a book where he is the thing everybody wants to eat is not an accident.
"There was."
Two characters. The narrator does not even say who is speaking; the exchange is moving too fast for attributions.
She asked again, "And one with a long snout and big ears?"
長 is cháng here, long, not zhǎng, senior — the same character that gives 長老, elder, a few lines earlier in this chapter. 長嘴大耳 is the standing description of Eight Rules and it appears three times in these pages. 耳朵 reduces its second syllable to duo, the ordinary modern neutral — though 朵 keeps its full tone as the measure word for a flower.
"There was."
The same two characters again, and the repetition is the point: she has confirmed both the men she is hunting.
A scene built entirely out of a servant answering questions he does not understand. She asks about a pale fat monk; he says yes. She asks about the one with the snout and the ears; he says yes. Nobody tells him why, and he never asks — which is exactly how information moves in a house with a back room.
The two descriptions are chosen with care. She wants Tripitaka, because everyone in this book wants Tripitaka. And she wants Eight Rules, because of what happened at the bathing pool in the last chapter, which the text will name outright before long. She does not ask about Pilgrim at all, and that omission is going to cost somebody a great deal.
Note how short the sentences have become. The chapter opened with an eighty-two-character rhapsody about egrets; it is now running two-character replies. Chinese fiction of this kind uses the length of its sentences the way film uses cutting speed, and the cuts have just got very fast indeed.