青松遮勝境 Green Pines Screen The Scene
行者謝了，辭別，把觔斗雲一縱，隨到紫雲山上。按定雲頭，就見那千花洞。那洞外：行者谢了，辞别，把觔斗云一纵，随到紫云山上。按定云头，就见那千花洞。那洞外：
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim gave his thanks, took his leave, launched his somersault cloud and was at Purple Cloud Mountain directly.
觔斗雲 is the somersault cloud, and 斗 in it is dǒu — the corpus seals that reading four times. One somersault carries him a hundred and eight thousand li, which is why a thousand li took the length of a sentence. 一縱 is a single leap.
He pressed his cloud down, and there was the Thousand Flower Cave.
按定 is to push down and hold — the standard verb for landing a cloud, as though it were a thing you had to keep still. Ten characters, and he has arrived.
Outside that cave:
Three characters and the verse switch. What follows is ten lines and it is the longest continuous run of poetry in the chapter.
Green pines screen a place of beauty, kingfisher cypress rings an immortal's dwelling.
勝境 keeps 勝 as shèng, surpassing — a place of outstanding beauty, and still the word on a Chinese scenic-area signboard. 翠 is kingfisher-green, the specific blue-green of the bird's feathers. Five and five, and the rhyme is already set on 居.
Green willows fill the mountain path, strange flowers crowd the gully stream.
盈 and 滿 both mean full to the brim, one to a half-line, which is the engine of parallel verse: say the same thing twice with different words and let the reader hear the join. 澗渠 is a ravine channel, a stream in a cut.
A thousand li in one sentence. Pilgrim thanks the Old Mother, jumps, and lands — and the narrative does not spend a character on the journey, because the journey was never the difficulty. She warned him about a three-day clock and a two-thousand-li round trip; he told her half a day would do it, and here he is.
Then the book stops dead for ten lines of scenery. That is worth noticing as a matter of pace: the chapter has a poisoned master on a three-day rot and it immediately spends a hundred and four characters on pines, willows and a gully. This novel always does this. Arriving somewhere is an occasion for a poem, and urgency is not a reason to skip it.
The scenery itself is doing a job, though. Every element — the screening pines, the ringing cypress, the immortal's dwelling — says that whoever lives here is genuine. Compare the last religious house Pilgrim walked into, whose grounds were also described at length and whose gate advertised inner alchemy in a couplet.