補補納納 Patching and Darning
那王小二有個婆子，帶了兩個孩子，哇哇聒噪，急忙不睡。那婆子又拿了一件破衣，補補納納，也不見睡。那王小二有个婆子，带了两个孩子，哇哇聒噪，急忙不睡。那婆子又拿了一件破衣，补补纳纳，也不见睡。
逐句解 Line by line
Wang the Second had a wife, and she had two children with her, squalling and making a racket, and she was in no hurry to sleep.
哇哇聒噪 is small children howling, four characters that are mostly sound. 急忙不睡 is not sleeping any time soon — the phrase means in a hurry, and negated it means the opposite of what Pilgrim wants.
And the woman took out a worn coat and set to patching and darning at it, and showed no sign of sleeping either.
補補納納 doubles both halves of patch-and-stitch, and doubling a verb this way in spoken Chinese makes it unhurried and open-ended — she is not mending a coat, she is settling in for the evening with some mending. It is the worst possible sentence for a burglar to hear.
The chapter has now put four separate obstacles between Pilgrim and a pile of clothes, and not one of them is supernatural: careful merchants, an honest innkeeper, a locked room, and a woman who will not go to bed.
There is a real domestic scene here doing the work a monster usually does. Two children yelling, a mother with mending on her lap, a long ordinary evening. The Great Sage Equal to Heaven, who once fought the armies of the Jade Emperor, is stuck on a headcloth stand waiting for a tired woman to finish her sewing.