Canonical Classics ← 第八十二回
第八十二回
chàqiúyáng
yuánshéndào

The Fair Girl Seeks the Yang · The Primal Spirit Guards the Way

兒子胡說
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拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

兒子胡說 Your Son Talks Nonsense

xíngzhědào:「zhèdāiziyòushuōle。」jièdào:「deérzishuōcáiliǎngtáishuǐdeyāojīngshuōānpáiyántángsēngchīlechéngqīnli。」xíngzhědào:「zhèdāiziyòushuōle。」jièdào:「deérzishuōcáiliǎngtáishuǐdeyāojīngshuōānpáiyántángsēngchīlechéngqīnli。」


逐句解 Line by line

xíngzhědào:「zhèdāiziyòushuōle。」 xíngzhědào:「zhèdāiziyòushuōle。」

Pilgrim said, "The Idiot is talking nonsense again."

The word , again, is the whole of Pilgrim's opinion. He does not argue with the content.

jièdào:「deérzishuō jièdào:「deérzishuō

Bajie said, "It is your son who talks nonsense."

A stock retort of Ming vernacular abuse, and rougher than it looks in English: claiming somebody's son said it puts the speaker a generation up and is a standard way of insulting a man through his family. Coming from Bajie to Pilgrim, who has no son, it is pure playground.

cáiliǎngtáishuǐdeyāojīngshuōānpáiyántángsēngchīlechéngqīnli。」 cáiliǎngtáishuǐdeyāojīngshuōānpáiyántángsēngchīlechéngqīnli。」

"Those two water-carrying fiends said just now that they are laying out a plain feast, and when the monk of Tang has eaten it they are to be married."

And at last he delivers the intelligence, in the middle of a squabble. The order of operations is entirely Bajie: divide the luggage, insult his brother, then mention the news.


總評 Commentary

The scene is built on a reversal. Bajie has been the fool for six passages, and now he turns out to be the only one who knows what is happening. He is right about the facts and wrong about everything else, which is a fair summary of his role in the book.

The insult is a useful window on how Ming characters actually swore at each other. Chinese abuse works through the family line, and to attribute nonsense to a man's son is to assert seniority over him. It is not obscene; it is a status move, and it is the sort of thing brothers say.

Note also what Bajie leaves out of his report. He does not mention the bow, the grandmother, or the three questions he could not answer. He was there, he got the information, and the manner of getting it does not survive into his account.