原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
馬鞍兒銀子 A Lump Like A Saddle
行者聞言，即伸手在耳朵竅中摸出，真個是塊馬鞍兒銀子，足有四錢五六分重。拿在手裡，忍不住哈哈的一聲大笑。行者闻言，即伸手在耳朵窍中摸出，真个是块马鞍儿银子，足有四钱五六分重。拿在手里，忍不住哈哈的一声大笑。
逐句解 Line by line
行者聞言，即伸手在耳朵竅中摸出，真個是塊馬鞍兒銀子，足有四錢五六分重。
行者闻言，即伸手在耳朵窍中摸出，真个是块马鞍儿银子，足有四钱五六分重。
Wukong heard him, reached into the hollow of the ear and drew it out, and it was indeed a lump of silver shaped like a saddle, a good four mace five or six fen in weight.
重 reads zhòng, weight. 馬鞍兒銀子 — silver cast in the saddle shape, dipped in the middle and turned up at both ends, which is how a small ingot was poured.
拿在手裡，忍不住哈哈的一聲大笑。
拿在手里，忍不住哈哈的一声大笑。
He held it in his hand and could not keep back a great shout of laughter.
忍不住 — cannot hold it in. The laugh is what gives him away.
The silver is real and it is shaped like a saddle — a small ingot poured into a mould so that it sags in the middle and lifts at the ends. Anyone in the Ming would have known the shape on sight. The novel gives it because a hoard has to be a specific object before it can be funny.
Note that the weight has changed. Bajie said four mace six fen; the narrator says a good four mace five or six. The story has been told twice and the figure has already started drifting, which is exactly what happens to a sum that has been complained about for months.
And then the laugh, which ends the performance. Wukong has sustained a whole underworld bureaucracy — the warrant, the quota, the life-taking cord — and he blows it in one breath because holding the money is funnier than anything he could say. He is not a patient trickster.