那個時辰 When Did I Ever Eat Meat
長老聞言，咬牙切齒道：「徒弟，我自出了長安，到兩界山中收你，一向西來，那個時辰動葷？那一日子有甚歪意？长老闻言，咬牙切齿道：「徒弟，我自出了长安，到两界山中收你，一向西来，那个时辰动荤？那一日子有甚歪意？
逐句解 Line by line
The elder heard this, and grinding his teeth said, "Disciple! Since I came out of Chang An and took you on at the Mountain of Two Frontiers, and all the westward way since — at what hour did I ever break my fast with meat?"
The place name is worth marking, because the ordinary reading of the character would get it wrong: in the capital's name 長 is cháng, long or lasting, not the zhǎng of an elder. Chang An is Tang-dynasty Xi An, where the pilgrimage began. The Mountain of Two Frontiers is where Tripitaka peeled the Buddha's gold-lettered charm off the rock in chapter fourteen and let Pilgrim out from under it. And 那 is nǎ here, the questioning reading, in a demand that expects the answer never.
"On what day did I ever harbour a crooked thought?"
The parallel question, and again 那 is nǎ, questioning. 歪意 is a bent or crooked intention — the vernacular word for exactly the kind of thought Pilgrim has just accused him of being open to.
The teeth-grinding is the tell. Tripitaka is not frightened here, he is insulted, and the two rhetorical questions come out as a defence of a career. Fourteen years, several thousand lǐ, and not one lapse of diet or of thought.
Pilgrim's provocation has worked perfectly. He wanted to know whether his master had been moved; he got an answer with the force of an oath behind it, and he got it in about twenty characters. It is a cruel way to ask and an efficient one.
The two vows named are the two that matter for a monk in this situation, and the novel keeps them together on purpose. Meat and desire are the same discipline seen from two sides, and the fiend upstairs has already ordered a vegetarian banquet precisely to get around the first of them.