小皮箱兒 A Small Leather Box
眾女子相隨左右。他入房內，取了梯子，轉過床後，爬上屋梁，拿下一個小皮箱兒。那箱兒有八寸高下，一尺長短，四寸寬窄，上有一把小銅鎖兒鎖住。众女子相随左右。他入房内，取了梯子，转过床后，爬上屋梁，拿下一个小皮箱儿。那箱儿有八寸高下，一尺长短，四寸宽窄，上有一把小铜锁儿锁住。
逐句解 Line by line
The women followed close on either side of him.
相隨 takes 相 as xiāng, the reciprocal — accompanying one another. 左右 is literally left and right, here meaning at his elbow on both sides. Seven of them, in a line behind one man, walking towards a locked box.
He went into a room, fetched a ladder, passed round behind the bed, climbed to the roof-beam and brought down a small leather box.
Five verbs in twenty-four characters and not one wasted: enter, fetch, pass round, climb, bring down. The prose has switched from argument to procedure, which is how this book signals that something is actually about to happen. 屋梁, the roof-beam, is the classic Chinese hiding place — above eye level, out of a servant's reach, and requiring a ladder, which is the point. Whatever is in that box, he does not want it found by accident.
The box stood some eight cùn high, a chǐ or so long and four cùn across, with a small brass lock fastening it.
Chinese measurements are kept as they stand rather than converted, because the conversion would be false precision: a chǐ is a foot-length that varied by period and by trade, and a cùn is a tenth of it. Take it as a box you could carry under one arm. Note the shape of each phrase — 八寸高下, 一尺長短, 四寸寬窄 — where the measure is followed by a two-character pair meaning "tall-short", "long-short", "wide-narrow". Chinese asks for a dimension by naming both ends of it, and the pair does the work English does with "about". 長 here is cháng, long, not zhǎng, senior.
The pace changes completely here and it is worth noticing how. Five passages of people arguing in a back room, and now a man climbing a ladder in silence with seven women watching. The narrator has stopped reporting speech and started reporting hands.
Everything about the box says what it contains before we are told. It lives on a roof-beam behind a bed; it needs a ladder; it is locked; the key is on his person and not in a drawer. A man does not go to that trouble for anything he would be comfortable explaining. And he has brought an audience of seven to watch him fetch it, which tells you what he thinks of them.
The dimensions are the kind of detail this book gives when it wants a thing to feel real rather than symbolic. Eight cùn by a chǐ by four cùn is an ordinary document box, the size of something you would keep deeds in. It is exactly the wrong size to be impressive, and that is why it is frightening.