原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
忒護短
You Take His Side
行者笑道：「師父也忒護短，忒偏心。罷了，像老孫拿去時，你略不掛念，左右是捨命之材；這獃子才自遭擒，你就怪我。也教他受些苦惱，方見取經之難。」行者笑道：「师父也忒护短，忒偏心。罢了，像老孙拿去时，你略不挂念，左右是舍命之材；这呆子才自遭擒，你就怪我。也教他受些苦恼，方见取经之难。」
逐句解 Line by line
行者笑道：「師父也忒護短，忒偏心。
行者笑道：「师父也忒护短，忒偏心。
Wukong laughed and said: "Master, you do cover up for him, and you are partial.
忒 — excessively, far too much. 護短 is to shield someone's faults rather than admit them.
罷了，像老孫拿去時，你略不掛念，左右是捨命之材；
罢了，像老孙拿去时，你略不挂念，左右是舍命之材；
Enough of it. When it was I who was carried off, you spared me not a thought — one way or the other I am timber to be spent.
罷了 keeps bà for the particle. 捨命之材 — stuff to be given up, the sort of material a builder expects to lose.
這獃子才自遭擒，你就怪我。
这呆子才自遭擒，你就怪我。
This fool has been caught for one moment, and at once you blame me.
才自 — only just now.
也教他受些苦惱，方見取經之難。」
也教他受些苦恼，方见取经之难。」
Let him take some hardship too, and then you will see what fetching the scriptures costs."
取經之難 — the difficulty of the scripture-fetching, with nán for the adjective rather than the nàn of disaster.
總評 Commentary
Wukong's grievance is real and he has been holding it. He spent the whole first half of this chapter inside a monster's stomach, and nobody wept; Bajie is taken for a few minutes and the master is in tears. The phrase he uses for himself is a builder's word — material you expect to use up — and it is the closest thing to self-pity the novel ever lets him have.
The charge of partiality is one of the running arguments of the whole book. Tripitaka is soft on Bajie because Bajie complains, and hard on Wukong because Wukong copes. Anyone who has watched a household distribute its sympathy will know the pattern: the one who never asks for help is assumed not to need any.
His last line is the serious one, dressed as spite. Let him suffer and you will see what this journey costs. Wukong is arguing that the pilgrimage is not a procession but a trial, and that Bajie has been allowed to skip the trial for too long. That is the novel's own theology, put into the mouth of the character who is at that moment being thoroughly petty.