Canonical Classics ← 第七十九回
第七十九回
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Seeking the Cave to Seize the Fiend He Meets the Old Man of Longevity · At Court the True Sovereign Rescues the Infants

沒奈何
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

沒奈何 Nothing Else For It

jièdào:「méinàimenqiějiànleshīxiōngyǒujiěshì。」zhēnzhǎnglǎozhǐgēnzhejièshāsēngtiāozhedānqiānzhetóngtíngzhīshàngjièdào:「méinàimenqiějiànleshīxiōngyǒujiěshì。」zhēnzhǎnglǎozhǐgēnzhejièshāsēngtiāozhedānqiānzhetóng驿tíngzhīshàng


逐句解 Line by line

jièdào:「méinàimenqiějiànleshīxiōngyǒujiěshì。」 jièdào:「méinàimenqiějiànleshīxiōngyǒujiěshì。」

Bajie said, "There's nothing else for it. Let us go and see our elder brother, and an explanation will present itself."

沒奈何 — no way of dealing with it — is one of the most useful phrases in vernacular Chinese and still in daily use. It covers everything from "can't be helped" to "we have no choice," and Bajie deploys it here as a way of ending a conversation he is losing.

zhēnzhǎnglǎozhǐgēnzhejièshāsēngtiāozhedānqiānzhetóngtíngzhīshàng zhēnzhǎnglǎozhǐgēnzhejièshāsēngtiāozhedānqiānzhetóng驿tíngzhīshàng

Truly the elder had no plan of his own, so he could only follow Bajie and Sha Monk, with the luggage carried on the pole and the horse led by the bridle, and go together to the courtyard of the hostel.

Three in one sentence, all of them zhe, the reading that marks an action still going on: following, carrying, leading. Ranged against the zhuó and zháo of earlier passages, this is the commonest of the four jobs the character does. 挑著擔,牽著馬 is a fixed pair the novel uses whenever the party moves — a two-clause shorthand for packing up and setting off.


總評 Commentary

The formula about the pole and the bridle appears dozens of times in the book, and by this point in the journey it functions almost as punctuation: whenever you see it, the pilgrims are on the move again.

It also quietly reasserts the hierarchy. Wukong is in the sky settling matters of state; the other three are on the ground with the baggage. The novel never loses track of who is carrying what.