一個蜜蜂 Changed Into A Honeybee He Looks
好大聖，捻著訣，念聲咒語，搖身一變，變作一個蜜蜂兒，展開翅，飛近邊前，鑽進幔裡觀看，原來裡面坐的是個小孩兒。再去第二家籠裡看，也是個小孩兒。連看八九家，都是個小孩兒。卻是男身，更無女子。好大圣，捻着诀，念声咒语，摇身一变，变作一个蜜蜂儿，展开翅，飞近边前，钻进幔里观看，原来里面坐的是个小孩儿。再去第二家笼里看，也是个小孩儿。连看八九家，都是个小孩儿。却是男身，更无女子。
逐句解 Line by line
Splendid Great Sage! He made the sign with his fingers, recited a spell, shook himself and changed — became a honeybee, spread his wings, flew up close, slipped inside the hanging and looked; and there, sitting within, was a small child.
Forty-five characters in one breath, and the novel does not stop once. 好大聖 hǎo dà shèng — splendid Great Sage — is the storyteller applauding his own hero mid-sentence. 著 is zhe, the running marker again. Then the chapter's two readings of one character, side by side: in 蜂兒 it is a suffix, turning "bee" into "little bee", while in 孩兒 it is a word in its own right meaning a child. Two quite different jobs, and both read ér — the suffix was still a full syllable in sixteenth-century speech.
He went on to look in the coop of a second household, and that too held a small child.
The novel begins counting. Nothing is said about what this means.
He looked at eight or nine houses in a row, and every one held a small child.
八九家 is eight or nine — two adjacent numbers put together for a rough count, exactly as English says "eight or nine." The repetition is doing the work: three sentences, and the same thing inside every coop he opens.
They were all boys, without a single girl among them.
The detail that makes it a pattern rather than a coincidence, and it is given in eight characters with no comment at all. 更 is gèng, reinforcing the negative — not one, not even one. Whatever is being done here is being done to boys on purpose.
The prose changes gear here, and it is worth reading aloud to hear it. The first sentence runs forty-five characters through eight commas before it reaches a full stop. Then the sentences get shorter: fourteen characters, eleven, eight. The effect is a man moving fast and then slowing down as he understands what he is looking at.
The novel is also being careful about who knows what. Wukong sees the children before the reader is told why they are there, and he does not work it out either — his report back is a plain description ending in "I do not know why." Nobody in the chapter guesses the truth. It has to be told to them, at night, by a frightened official.
The last line lands hardest because it is the shortest. Eight characters to establish that the selection is deliberate. In a novel that gives a hillside eight lines of verse, the restraint is the point.