黃金鎧甲 Crown and Golden Mail
頭戴著三額金冠，身穿著黃金鎧甲，手執著金箍棒，足踏著步雲履。手下有四萬七千群怪，都稱我做大聖爺爺，著實為人。头戴着三额金冠，身穿着黄金铠甲，手执着金箍棒，足踏着步云履。手下有四万七千群怪，都称我做大圣爷爷，着实为人。
逐句解 Line by line
On my head I wore a triple-arched cap of gold, on my body I wore mail of yellow gold, in my hand I held the gold-hooped rod, and on my feet I trod cloud-walking shoes.
Four times in this line 著 is the quiet zhe that holds an action open — wearing and going on wearing. It is the single commonest reading of the character in the chapter and this is its densest run.
Under my command were forty-seven thousand fiends of every kind, and every one of them called me Grandfather Great Sage. I was truly somebody then.
Two different lives of one character in a row. 著實 is zhuó shí, a fixed word meaning "really, in solid fact" — the literary reading, quite separate from the zhe four times over in the line before. And 為 in 為人 is wéi, the linking "to be," not the wèi of doing something for somebody.
The inventory is the point. Cap, mail, rod, shoes — Pilgrim is dressing himself in memory, item by item, the way anyone might handle old kit they no longer wear. He still has the rod. Everything else went.
The last four characters are the ones that ache. Rendering them is hard because the Chinese is so plain: he was, in solid fact, a person. Somebody who counted. Said in mid-air by a servant on an errand, five hundred years and one iron headband later, it is the closest this book lets him come to self-pity.