異樣珍饈 Rare and Wonderful Delicacies
逐句解 Line by line
On the inlaid tables, delicacies of a rare kind;
珍饈 is the formal word for fine food, the sort that appears in descriptions of imperial banquets. The rhapsody is claiming a very high standard before it names a single dish.
in the bamboo-strip trays, plain foods of a strange sort.
The matched line, and the pairing is exact: inlaid tables against bamboo trays, rare delicacies against strange plain foods. Here 盛 is chéng, to hold or contain, not the shèng of abundance. And 素 is the vegetarian, unadorned kind — the whole feast is meatless, as promised.
Crab-apple, olive, lotus seed, grape, torreya nut, crab-apple pear, hazelnut, pine nut, lychee, longan, mountain chestnut, water caltrop, jujube, persimmon, walnut, ginkgo, kumquat, sweet orange — fruits to be had all over the hills;
Eighteen fruits in a single breath, and the joke is the last clause: all of it grows on the mountain. The list is a real one — 龍眼 is the longan, dragon's eye; 風菱 is the water caltrop; 銀杏 is the ginkgo nut — and a Ming reader would have been able to price the lot.
This is a shopping list set to a rhythm, and it was the point of the form. Audiences for storytelling liked catalogues — of dishes, of weapons, of scenery — the way an audience likes a guitar solo, and the performer's skill was in getting through eighteen fruits without stumbling.
There is a quiet boast folded into the closing clause. Everything named grows wild in the surrounding hills, which means the fiend has laid on a spectacular table without buying anything. This is not a rich household showing off its money; it is a mountain power showing off its territory.
And every item is vegetarian, which is the running argument of the whole rhapsody. She said she knew he ate no meat and she has made the point at enormous length.