骨頭輕 His Bones Are Lighter
好大聖,話畢,將身一縱,唿哨的跳在空中。怪哉:好大圣,话毕,将身一纵,唿哨的跳在空中。怪哉:
逐句解 Line by line
Fine Great Sage! The words were hardly out of his mouth before he gave his body a heave and shot up whistling into the air.
好大聖 is the storyteller's applause line, dropped in before a display of power — it belongs to the teller, not to any character. 唿哨 is a whistle through the fingers, and it is the sound Wukong makes when he takes off.
A marvel:
Two characters and a colon, and the verse follows. The novel sets off anything it wants read as a set piece this way.
Nothing above pulling him up on a rope; nothing below propping him with a pole.
The joke is that the verse describes what sounds like stage machinery and then tells you there is none of it. A listener picturing an acrobat on a rope is being corrected in advance.
Born of the same parents as anyone else, and his bones are simply lighter.
一般同父母 is the flat vernacular for made the same way as everybody else. Then the punchline: 骨頭輕, light-boned. It is a phrase still used of someone who cannot sit still or keep their dignity, so the line manages a physical explanation and a character sketch at once.
Four lines that explain how Wukong flies by refusing to explain it. No rope, no pole, same parents as anyone — and lighter bones. It is not a reason, it is a shrug, and the shrug is funnier than a reason would be.
Light bones do real work in the sentence. Said of a person the phrase means flighty, unweighted, incapable of gravity in either sense — which is a fair summary of Wukong from Tripitaka's point of view, delivered as though it were anatomy.