斷腸人 Broken Hearts Meeting
行者點頭嗟嘆道：「正是：『流淚眼逢流淚眼，斷腸人遇斷腸人。』這一個婦人，不知所哭何事？待我問他一問。」行者点头嗟叹道：「正是：『流泪眼逢流泪眼，断肠人遇断肠人。』这一个妇人，不知所哭何事？待我问他一问。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim nodded and sighed. "Just so: weeping eyes meet weeping eyes, and the broken-hearted meet the broken-hearted."
He is quoting, and the quotation is famous. 流淚眼逢流淚眼，斷腸人遇斷腸人 is a couplet from Yuan drama that had already passed into proverb by the Ming, and it is still recognisable today. 斷腸, severed bowels, is the standard Chinese image for grief where English says a broken heart — the organ differs, the sense is identical. Note the nested quotation marks: 「 opens his speech, 『 opens the tag he is citing.
"Here is a woman, and who knows what she is weeping for? Let me go and ask her."
問他一問 is a verb doubled around 一 — ask her a single ask — a common vernacular way of making an action brief and casual, like English "have a quick ask". It is the same shape as 幌一幌, give it a shake, fifteen passages back.
Pilgrim's instinct at the sight of another person's grief is to quote poetry at it, and the book does not treat that as callous. He is genuinely moved — he has just been crying himself — and reaching for a stock couplet is what a man of any education in this period does when feeling arrives.
The couplet is worth knowing because it is still alive. 流淚眼逢流淚眼 turns up in Yuan plays, in Ming fiction, and in modern speech, and it means what it says: sorrow recognises sorrow. It is also, here, dramatic irony of the crudest and most enjoyable kind. One of these two weeping people is not weeping.
And then the practical turn: 待我問他一問, let me just ask her. Sympathy followed immediately by an interview. That is the character in one sentence — he feels the thing and then investigates it, which is why he is the one who survives this chapter.