鎮海禪林寺 The Sea Calming Monastery
正行間，又見山門上有五個大字，乃「鎮海禪林寺」。才舉步，䟕入門裡，忽見一個和尚走來。你看他怎生模樣：正行间，又见山门上有五个大字，乃「镇海禅林寺」。才举步，䟕入门里，忽见一个和尚走来。你看他怎生模样：
逐句解 Line by line
As they went on he saw five great characters over the mountain gate: Sea-Calming Chan Grove Monastery.
A 禪林, a Chan grove, is a meditation house; 鎮海, calming the sea, is a name given to temples thought to hold down water and storm. It is a considerable name for a place with bandits in the front rooms.
He had just taken a step and trodden his way in through the gate when all at once he saw a monk coming.
The character 䟕 is the rarest in the chapter and one of only two in the whole novel — the other is in chapter 38, also after 舉步. It is read chà. The Kāngxī dictionary files it under the foot radical with three further strokes, gives it the sound of a word meaning a slit or a fork, and records two senses: a forked road, and, from the Yùpiān glossary, simply to tread. Look at the shape and both make sense at once — it is the character for a foot standing beside the character for a fork.
Look what he was like:
模 is mú, appearance — the third and last time the chapter uses 模樣, and it takes the same reading at all three.
On his head a hair-pinned cap of fleecy brocade, / a pair of copper rings hanging from his ears.
Everything in this portrait is foreign to a Chinese monk: a Chinese cleric shaves his head and wears no jewellery at all.
The chapter's rarest character arrives here, and it is worth stopping on. Two appearances in a hundred chapters, both of them the same gesture: a man takes a step and treads his way in through a gate. It is a very small word for a very small movement, and the author reached for it twice.
The portrait that follows is the novel doing something it does rarely — describing a person who is simply from somewhere else. Not a demon, not an immortal. A monk of a different school, seen through the eyes of a Chinese pilgrim who has never met one.