天無二日 Heaven Has No Second Sun
貴處養孩兒，不知怎生看待。」驛丞道：「天無二日，人無二理。養育孩童，父精母血，懷胎十月，待時而生。生下乳哺三年，漸成體相。豈有不知之理。」贵处养孩儿，不知怎生看待。」驿丞道：「天无二日，人无二理。养育孩童，父精母血，怀胎十月，待时而生。生下乳哺三年，渐成体相。岂有不知之理。」
逐句解 Line by line
"In your honourable land, how are children brought up? I do not know how they are treated here."
A question so oblique it does not sound like one. Tripitaka has seen boys in baskets and is asking how this country handles children, as though it were a matter of local custom — which, horribly, is what it has become. 兒 is ér, a child, in 孩兒, and not the suffix er.
The courier chief said, "Heaven has no second sun; people have no second principle.
天無二日 tiān wú èr rì comes from the Book of Rites, where it argues that a state has one ruler as the sky has one sun. The courier chief is using it to say something much simpler — there is only one way of doing this — and the reader who knows the original is invited to notice that he has just invoked the sentence about there being only one legitimate king.
"Children are reared from a father's essence and a mother's blood, carried ten months in the womb, and born when their time comes.
The standard account of conception in Chinese medicine, given as plain fact. Ten months is the Chinese reckoning of a pregnancy, counted in lunar months and inclusively.
"After birth they are suckled three years and gradually take on human form. How could anyone not know that?"
相 is xiàng here — form or appearance — not the xiāng that means mutually, which is how five of the chapter's nine take it. 鱐有 qǐ yǒu at the head of a clause is the rhetorical "how could there be," expecting no answer.
The courier chief answers a question about this country by describing childbirth in general, which is a way of not answering. Everything he says is true and none of it is what was asked.
The evasion is the most human thing in the chapter. He is a middling official in a kingdom where the king is having children killed, and a foreign monk has just asked him, at his own table, how children are treated here. He recites the textbook. He will hold this line for two more exchanges before Tripitaka physically takes hold of him.