這等俊俏 Nothing Like So Handsome
抖一抖錦衣直裰，拽步上前，向唐僧道：「師父，我看變得好麼？」三藏見了大喜道：「變得好。」八戒道：「怎麼不好？只是把我們都比下去了。老豬就滾上二三年，也變不得這等俊俏。」抖一抖锦衣直裰，拽步上前，向唐僧道：「师父，我看变得好么？」三藏见了大喜道：「变得好。」八戒道：「怎么不好？只是把我们都比下去了。老猪就滚上二三年，也变不得这等俊俏。」
逐句解 Line by line
He gave his brocade cassock a shake, strode forward and said to the Tang Monk, "Master, how does the change look to you?"
直裰 is the straight-seamed robe a monk wears, and 錦 makes it brocade — Pilgrim has not only changed his face, he has dressed the part. 拽 is yè, and the corpus is unanimous on it: all eight sealed occurrences read that way, including this same 拽步 in each of the two previous chapters. 得 is the unstressed de that hooks a verb to the comment on it — changed, and how well? — rather than the dé of getting or being able.
Tripitaka looked and was delighted. "Well changed."
Three characters of approval, and they are the same three characters Pilgrim has just used as a question. The master is not being eloquent. He is being relieved.
Bajie said, "How could it not be good?
八戒 has not opened his mouth since the chapter began, and his first move is to agree with his master in a tone that is plainly about to stop agreeing. 怎麼不好 is a rhetorical question with a grievance parked behind it.
Only, it puts the rest of us quite in the shade.
比下去 is to compare somebody downward, to outclass them, and it is still said exactly that way. 把 is the grammar of doing something to a thing rather than merely doing it: in Bajie's telling, Pilgrim has not just changed, he has changed something at them.
Old Hog could roll at it for two or three years and still never manage anything as good-looking as that."
老豬, Old Hog, is what Bajie calls himself, and the modesty is entirely fake — he is fishing. 滾 is to roll, which is what a pig does in mud, and he has chosen it on purpose. 得 is de again: put a verb in front of 不 and the phrase becomes the potential negative, cannot manage it, with the 得 going unstressed. All eight of the previous chapter's occurrences of that pattern turned the same way.
The chapter has already had one laugh at Tripitaka, face down in the grass with two careful reasons. This one is different, because the target picks himself. Bajie manages to turn a compliment into a grievance inside three sentences.
The shape of it is very exact. Agree loudly, concede the point, then reveal that the point was never really the issue — the issue is that somebody else looked good. Anyone who has sat through a meeting will recognise the manoeuvre.
He is also, as usual, the only one saying the obvious thing. The transformation is a piece of theatre performed for an audience of three, and Bajie is the only member of that audience honest enough to admit he is comparing himself to it.