嚶嚶的啼哭 The Fire Crew Has Changed
沙僧與長老嚶嚶的啼哭。八戒道：「且不要哭，這一會燒火的換了班了。」沙僧道：「你怎麼知道？」沙僧与长老嘤嘤的啼哭。八戒道：「且不要哭，这一会烧火的换了班了。」沙僧道：「你怎么知道？」
逐句解 Line by line
Sha Monk and the elder wept in thin little sobs.
嚶嚶 doubles a character for a small high sound — the noise of birds calling to each other, borrowed for the crying of people trying not to be heard. Ten characters, and two of them do all the work.
Bajie said, "Never mind crying. The fire crew has changed shift just now."
換了班, changed the shift, is the flat industrial phrase, and it is the last thing anyone expects from a man in a steamer.
Sha Monk said, "How do you know that?"
Eight characters, and the same question Sha Monk asked about the fledgling and the old hand. He is the character whose function is to ask, and the book uses him for it twice in one chapter.
Two men are crying and the third is reading the shift rota off the temperature. The arrangement is the same one from the first night, with Wukong smiling while the others wept, except that Wukong is not in the pot any more and Bajie has taken over the role.
The bird-sound doubling in the first line deserves its moment. It is a word from the Book of Songs, where it describes birds answering one another in a valley, and here it is two grown men sobbing quietly in a covered basket over a fire. The novel reaches for the highest register it has for the least dignified situation it can find.