The idiot said with a laugh, "Master, today must be a lucky day of the yellow path, fit for weddings and for gathering friends. They are all performing the rites."

黃道良辰 huáng dào liáng chén — the yellow path is the sun's track through the sky, and a day on which the almanac says the influences are favourable is a yellow-path day. Chinese still uses the phrase for a date picked out of an almanac for a wedding or an opening. 獸子 ái zi, the idiot, is the narrator's standing nickname for Bajie, and it is affectionate more often than not.

Pilgrim said, "Rubbish. How would every single household be performing rites?

那 is nǎ here, not the pointing nà — this is the questioning one, used the way English uses "how on earth," where no answer is expected. In the whole chapter only two of the fifty 那 take this reading, and both of them are in 那裡.

There must be a reason for it. Let me go up and take a look."

看看 kàn kàn — doubling a verb in Chinese softens it into having a quick go at something. Wukong is proposing a glance, and what he finds will take him the rest of the night to deal with.

Tripitaka took hold of him and said, "Do not go. Your face is ugly, and I am afraid people will take offence at you."

Tripitaka's reflex whenever Wukong offers to do anything in public, and it has been earned: the old soldier at the gate fell on his knees. The novel keeps this running because it is the one place where the master is reliably right about his disciple.

Pilgrim said, "I shall go in another shape."

Ten characters, and the objection is answered. 兒 is ér, as it is at all thirty-one of the chapter's. On 個兒 it is not the word for a child but a suffix, doing the job of the vague "a bit of" in "a bit of a change" — and it still has a syllable of its own. Modern speech would swallow it into the syllable before it, which is a thing this reader cannot show, one box to a character.