原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
修一封書 A Letter For The Emperor
行者道：「要怎的？」長老道：「我要修一封書，並關文封在一處，你替我送上長安駕下，見太宗皇帝一面。」行者道：「要怎的？」长老道：「我要修一封书，并关文封在一处，你替我送上长安驾下，见太宗皇帝一面。」
逐句解 Line by line
行者道：「要怎的？」
行者道：「要怎的？」
Pilgrim said, "What for?"
Six characters, and he already suspects.
長老道：「我要修一封書，並關文封在一處，你替我送上長安駕下，見太宗皇帝一面。」
长老道：「我要修一封书，并关文封在一处，你替我送上长安驾下，见太宗皇帝一面。」
The Elder said, "I want to write a letter, and enclose it together with our travel rescript, and have you take it for me to the throne at Chang'an, and see the Emperor Taizong face to face."
長 is cháng in the city's name, Chang'an, the Tang capital — against the zhǎng of seniority in 長老, elder, four characters earlier in this very sentence. Same character, two readings, one line. 關文 is the travel document stamped at each border kingdom, the passport that proves the mission is imperial.
This is the letter of resignation. Tripitaka, three days into a fever, has decided that the scripture-quest is over and that the emperor should send somebody else.
It is worth registering how serious that is. He was given this task by an emperor and by the bodhisattva Guanyin; he has crossed most of a continent; he is, by the novel's own accounting, the reincarnated second disciple of the Buddha. And a bad chest cold has convinced him to quit.
The city's name in the same breath as his title is the kind of accident that makes a scribe's life difficult and a reader's life interesting: one character, seniority in one word and length in the other, sitting a few beats apart.