原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
師父沒了 The Master Is Gone
行者道：「我救你。你可知師父在那裡？」八戒道：「師父沒了，昨夜被妖精夾生兒吃了。」行者道：「我救你。你可知师父在那里？」八戒道：「师父没了，昨夜被妖精夹生儿吃了。」
逐句解 Line by line
行者道：「我救你。
行者道：「我救你。
Pilgrim said, "I will save you.
Six characters, unhesitating, and put first. Whatever the answer to the next question, the rescue is not conditional on it.
你可知師父在那裡？」
你可知师父在那里？」
Do you know where the master is?"
那 is nǎ here, the questioning reading — where, not that. He asks it as though it were an ordinary operational question.
八戒道：「師父沒了，昨夜被妖精夾生兒吃了。」
八戒道：「师父没了，昨夜被妖精夹生儿吃了。」
Bajie said, "The master is gone. Last night the monsters ate him raw."
沒了 is the plainest way Chinese has of saying somebody has died — literally, is not any more, and used exactly as English uses gone. Bajie reports it in seventeen characters with no softening at all.
Three short speeches and the chapter turns over. Wukong promises the rescue first and asks the question second, which is the right order and does not help him at all.
Bajie answers the way people actually do answer. He gives the fact, then the detail, and he chooses the flattest available word for the fact. He has been tied to a pillar all night believing this.
And it is not true. The reader knows it is not true, has watched the fiends invent it, and has to sit through the next several pages knowing more than anybody in them.