緊一嘴 A Chick and a Lapdog
米山邊有一隻拳大之雞，在那裡緊一嘴，慢一嘴，嗛那米吃。麵山邊有一隻金毛哈巴狗兒，在那裡長一舌，短一舌，餂那麵吃。米山边有一只拳大之鸡，在那里紧一嘴，慢一嘴，嗛那米吃。面山边有一只金毛哈巴狗儿，在那里长一舌，短一舌，餂那面吃。
逐句解 Line by line
Beside the mountain of rice there was a chick the size of a fist, and there it was, a quick peck and a slow peck, taking up the rice in its beak and eating it.
嗛 is read xián here, meaning to hold something in the mouth — the sense the dictionaries gloss as the mouth having something in it. The character carries another reading, qiǎn, which names the cheek pouch of a monkey or hamster; that is a noun and cannot take an object, so the grammar settles it. 那 in 在那裡 is nà, pointing — there — not the question word.
Beside the mountain of flour there was a golden-furred lapdog, and there it was, a long lick and a short lick, licking up the flour and eating it.
長 is cháng, long — paired directly against 短, short, which is what settles it against the reading zhǎng that means to grow. 哈巴狗 is a lapdog or pug, and the first character takes hǎ. It looks as though it might be a laugh and is not; the chapter's actual laughter is written with a different character altogether.
This is the image the whole chapter is built around, and it is one of the great inventions of the novel. Not a monster, not a barrier — a chick and a small dog, eating.
The cruelty of it is in the scale. A fist-sized chick taking one grain at a time from a mountain thirty metres high; a lapdog licking at sixty metres of flour. Nothing stops them. They are not guarded or enchanted. They are simply, patiently, eating — and it will take approximately forever.
It is the shape of a punishment designed to look like a possibility. Heaven has not said never. It has said when the chick has finished, and let a man work out for himself what that means.