淡鵝黃九錫 A Goose Yellow Gauze Kerchief
但見他：但见他：
逐句解 Line by line
And this is what he saw:
The fourth and last of the chapter's set-piece tags, and the longest portrait of the four.
On his head he wore a pale goose-yellow kerchief of nine-fold cloud brocade gauze; on his body a crane cape of chopstick-topped plum and aloeswood in cotton silk.
The lines have gone long — fourteen characters a half-line instead of seven — and the vocabulary has gone luxurious and slightly unparseable, which is the effect. 鶴氅 hè chǎng, the crane cape, is the recognised outer garment of a Daoist adept. 九錫 refers to the nine gifts an emperor bestowed on his highest servants; wearing them on your head is a claim.
At his waist was tied a sash of indigo-dyed cord of three gathered strands; on his feet he trod a pair of cloud-headed shoes of hemp warp and kudzu weft.
攢 is cuán, to gather several things into one — three strands twisted into a single cord — not the zǎn that means to put money by. 雲頭履 are shoes with the toe turned up in a cloud scroll, the standard footwear of an immortal in Chinese art.
In his hand he leaned on a staff of nine-jointed withered vine coiled like a dragon; at his breast hung a brocade bag figured with dragons, embroidered phoenixes and roundels of flowers.
Everything he carries is the correct equipment of a Daoist master and every piece of it is expensive. The novel is describing a costume, and it has already told the reader in the courier chief's account that this man arrived three years ago 打扯做道人模樣 — got up in the guise of a Daoist.
Portrait poems in this novel are how a reader is told what to think of somebody before they speak. Tripitaka's, a few passages back, was two couplets and ended on a living Buddha. This one runs to seven lines and never gets past the wardrobe.
The half-lines are twice their usual length and stuffed with fabric names, dyes and weaves, most of them too specific to picture. That is the joke and the judgement together. The poem is doing what the man is doing: producing a great deal of impressive material and no substance.
And the phrase from the courier chief's night-time account is sitting under all of it. He is got up as a Daoist. Everything in these lines is a correct costume, correctly worn, by somebody who is not what the costume says.