原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
門牙都迸碎 The Front Teeth Shatter
原來行者在裡面聽得，便不先出去，卻把金箍棒伸出，試他一試。那怪果往下一口，扢喳的一聲，把個門牙都迸碎了。原来行者在里面听得，便不先出去，却把金箍棒伸出，试他一试。那怪果往下一口，扢喳的一声，把个门牙都迸碎了。
逐句解 Line by line
原來行者在裡面聽得，便不先出去，卻把金箍棒伸出，試他一試。
原来行者在里面听得，便不先出去，却把金箍棒伸出，试他一试。
Now Wukong, listening from within, did not go out first. Instead he pushed the gold-banded cudgel through, to test him.
聽得 — tīng dé. After a verb of perceiving, this character keeps its full dé.
那怪果往下一口，扢喳的一聲，把個門牙都迸碎了。
那怪果往下一口，扢喳的一声，把个门牙都迸碎了。
The monster bit down, and with a crunch his front teeth were smashed to bits.
扢喳 is a noise word, gē zhā, made to sound like the snap it names.
This is the shape of nearly every exchange between these two. The demon plans, Wukong guesses the plan, and the guess costs the demon a body part. He has not seen the whispered conference; he does not need to. He has worked out that a mouth held open on request is a mouth with something waiting behind it, so he sends the iron out ahead of himself.
The cudgel is worth remembering here. It weighs, by the novel's own reckoning, thirteen thousand five hundred catties, and it began life as the pole that measured the depth of the seas. Biting it is not like biting a weapon; it is like biting a bridge. The demon's teeth never stood a chance.
The noise word does the comic work. The narrator could have told us the teeth broke; instead he makes us hear it first and learn what happened second. Ming vernacular fiction is full of this, and it is one of the things that marks the register as spoken rather than literary — the storyteller reaching for the sound because his audience is listening rather than reading.