原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
勾司人 I Am From The Underworld
獃子忍不住問道：「是那個叫我的法名？」行者道：「是我。」獃子道：「你是那個？」行者道：「我是勾司人。」呆子忍不住问道：「是那个叫我的法名？」行者道：「是我。」呆子道：「你是那个？」行者道：「我是勾司人。」
逐句解 Line by line
獃子忍不住問道：「是那個叫我的法名？」
呆子忍不住问道：「是那个叫我的法名？」
The fool could not hold back and asked: "Which of you is calling my religious name?"
那 reads nǎ, the questioning band — which one, not that one.
行者道：「是我。」
行者道：「是我。」
Wukong said: "It is I."
是我 — two characters, and deliberately no more than that.
獃子道：「你是那個？」
呆子道：「你是那个？」
The fool said: "And who are you?"
那 is again nǎ.
行者道：「我是勾司人。」
行者道：「我是勾司人。」
Wukong said: "I am a summoner from the courts below."
勾司人 — a man of the summoning office, the underworld's warrant server.
The exchange is built out of very short lines, and the shortness is the technique. Wukong answers each question with the smallest possible amount of information, which forces Bajie to ask the next one and lets the dread build in the gaps. A talkative ghost would not be frightening.
The office he claims is a real fixture of the Chinese underworld, which was imagined as a bureaucracy: courts, registers, terms of life recorded, and clerks sent up to collect people when their entry came due. Claiming to be a summoner is roughly like producing a warrant. It is not a supernatural threat, it is an administrative one, and that is precisely why it works on Bajie.