原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
安排茶飯 Thirty To Do The Cooking
三怪道：「要三十個會烹煮的，與他些精米、細麵、竹筍、茶芽、香蕈、蘑菇、豆腐、麵筋，著他二十里或三十里，搭下窩鋪，安排茶飯，管待唐僧。」三怪道：「要三十个会烹煮的，与他些精米、细面、竹笋、茶芽、香蕈、蘑菇、豆腐、面筋，着他二十里或三十里，搭下窝铺，安排茶饭，管待唐僧。」
逐句解 Line by line
三怪道：「要三十個會烹煮的，與他些精米、細麵、竹筍、茶芽、香蕈、蘑菇、豆腐、麵筋，著他二十里或三十里，搭下窩鋪，安排茶飯，管待唐僧。」
三怪道：「要三十个会烹煮的，与他些精米、细面、竹笋、茶芽、香蕈、蘑菇、豆腐、面筋，着他二十里或三十里，搭下窝铺，安排茶饭，管待唐僧。」
The third fiend said: "I want thirty who can cook. Give them fine rice and good flour, bamboo shoots, tea buds, fragrant mushrooms, common mushrooms, bean curd and wheat gluten, and set them to putting up shelters every twenty or thirty li and preparing tea and food, to wait upon the Tang monk."
著 reads zhuó — to set someone to a task. This is the dispatch band, not the ending that marks an action in progress. 里 stays as lǐ: a Ming lǐ is about 576 metres, so the shelters stand roughly twelve to seventeen kilometres apart. 窩鋪 is a rough shelter thrown up for travellers.
The menu is the trap, and it is exquisitely chosen. Every item on it is permitted to a monk: rice, flour, bamboo shoots, tea buds, two kinds of mushroom, bean curd, wheat gluten. There is no meat, no fish, and nothing from the five pungent roots. Someone has taken trouble to find out what these travellers are allowed to eat.
Wheat gluten is worth pausing on. It is the standard meat substitute of Chinese monastic cooking — chewy, savoury, and made specifically so that people who cannot eat flesh have something with body to it. Putting it on the list is the detail of a host who has catered for monks before.
And then the logistics, which are the real work. Shelters every twenty or thirty li — twelve to seventeen kilometres, a comfortable day's stages — with food ready at each. The third fiend is not laying an ambush. He is building a hospitality operation along a road, and the pilgrims will walk it gratefully for days.