原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
上下鋼牙 Steel Teeth Like Blades
爬到咽喉之下，見妖精大張著方口，上下鋼牙排如利刃，忽思量道：「不好，不好。若從口裡出去扯這繩兒，他怕疼，往下一嚼，卻不咬斷了？我打他沒牙齒的所在出去。」爬到咽喉之下，见妖精大张着方口，上下钢牙排如利刃，忽思量道：「不好，不好。若从口里出去扯这绳儿，他怕疼，往下一嚼，却不咬断了？我打他没牙齿的所在出去。」
逐句解 Line by line
爬到咽喉之下，見妖精大張著方口，上下鋼牙排如利刃，忽思量道：「不好，不好。
爬到咽喉之下，见妖精大张着方口，上下钢牙排如利刃，忽思量道：「不好，不好。
Crawling down to the throat, he saw the monster's square mouth held wide, the steel teeth above and below ranged like knife blades, and he thought suddenly: "No good, no good.
咽 reads yān in 咽喉, the throat. 著 is zhe, the mouth held open and staying open.
若從口裡出去扯這繩兒，他怕疼，往下一嚼，卻不咬斷了？
若从口里出去扯这绳儿，他怕疼，往下一嚼，却不咬断了？
If I go out by the mouth and pull this cord, he will feel the pain, bite down, and will he not cut it through?
卻不 opens a question expecting agreement — surely he will?
我打他沒牙齒的所在出去。」
我打他没牙齿的所在出去。」
I shall leave by the place where he has no teeth."
所在 — a place, a spot. A plain spoken word, not a literary one.
The teeth are described as ranged like knife blades, and the reader is invited to remember that Wukong has already broken the front ones on his cudgel. What is left is a mouth that has learned, and the danger is no longer to Wukong's body but to his equipment. He is thinking like an engineer about a cable run through a hazard.
The solution is one of the great vulgar jokes of the novel and it is set up with complete seriousness. He surveys the exit, judges it unsafe, and resolves to leave by a toothless opening. The phrasing is deliberately neutral — a place where he has no teeth — so that the reader gets there a beat before the sentence does.
It is worth noting how much of Wukong's fighting is really problem-solving of this kind. He is the strongest creature in most rooms he enters, and the novel keeps finding ways to make that irrelevant, so that the interesting question is never whether he can win but how he will get around the particular obstacle in front of him.