原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
靜悄無人 The Mountain Was Silent
好大聖，唿哨一聲，縱觔斗雲，跳上高峰。扳藤負葛，平山觀看，那山裡靜悄無人。好大圣，唿哨一声，纵觔斗云，跳上高峰。扳藤负葛，平山观看，那山里静悄无人。
逐句解 Line by line
好大聖，唿哨一聲，縱觔斗雲，跳上高峰。
好大圣，唿哨一声，纵觔斗云，跳上高峰。
Splendid Great Sage! He gave a whistle, called up his somersault cloud and sprang to the high peak.
觔斗雲 is the somersault cloud, and 斗 is dǒu in it — the compound is sealed six times in earlier chapters and every one reads that way. 唿哨 is the two-fingered whistle, the noise a man makes to call a horse or start a fight.
扳藤負葛，平山觀看，那山裡靜悄無人。
扳藤负葛，平山观看，那山里静悄无人。
Pulling himself up by creepers and vines he levelled off and looked about him, and the mountain lay silent with nobody on it.
扳藤負葛 is hauling on creeper and shouldering through vine — four characters of climbing. Then 靜悄無人, with 悄 as qiǎo: quiet and empty. After forty-eight thousand demons with badges and a duty roster, there is nobody there at all.
The anticlimax is deliberate and it is beautifully placed. Everything in the chapter so far has been testimony — the old man's, Bajie's, Venus's — and the first time anybody actually looks, the mountain is empty.
Four characters of climbing and four characters of silence. The novel spends as much on getting him up there as on what he finds, which is nothing.
It is also the first time in the chapter that Pilgrim has been alone. Every previous scene has had an audience to perform for, and the next thing he does is talk to himself.