如生根一般 As Though It Had Taken Root
笑道：「我把這棍子送你罷。」那王子聽言，即丟了自己棍，去取那棒，雙手盡氣力一拔，莫想得動分毫；再又端一端，搖一搖，就如生根一般。笑道：「我把这棍子送你罢。」那王子听言，即丢了自己棍，去取那棒，双手尽气力一拔，莫想得动分毫；再又端一端，摇一摇，就如生根一般。
逐句解 Line by line
He laughed and said, "I will make you a present of this cudgel."
罷 is the light closing ba here, softening the offer into something offhand — I might as well give it you. It is not the bà of the dismissive tag Bajie used three passages back, though the character is the same. The offer is entirely genuine and entirely impossible, which Pilgrim knows and the prince does not.
The prince heard this, dropped his own staff at once, went to take the rod, and pulled at it with both hands and all his strength — without shifting it a hair.
The boy drops his own weapon to reach for the better one, which is the whole psychology of the scene in six characters. 莫想得動 is a fixed shape: there was no hope of getting it to move. 得 is de here, the hinge in a can-or-cannot phrase — not could-move but could-not-possibly-move. 分毫, a tenth and a hundredth, is the standard way of saying not by the smallest measurable amount.
He tried lifting it level, tried rocking it, and it was as though it had taken root.
端 is to hold something level with both hands, the way you carry a full tray; 搖 is to rock or waggle. He works down from pulling to lifting to simply wobbling it, which is exactly what anyone does with a stuck object. 如生根一般, as if it had grown roots, is still the ordinary Chinese for something immovably fixed.
Pilgrim offers the rod as a gift and the boy cannot pick it up. Nothing in the exchange is hostile and the humiliation is total.
The sequence of attempts is beautifully observed: haul, then lift, then rock. It is what a person does with a fence post, and the novel knows that a reader who has ever tried to shift something too heavy will recognise every stage.
The rod weighs thirteen thousand five hundred catties, a figure the chapter gives later in verse. The prince was never going to move it, and the point of the scene is not the failure but what the failure teaches: strength here is not a matter of trying harder.