Xuanzang received his master's instructions, took on the guise of an alms-begging monk, and went straight to Jiangzhou.

領了師父言語, having received his master's words — 領 is to take delivery of a thing, instructions included. He does not improvise. He follows the plan exactly as given.

It happened that Liu Hong was away on business — it was Heaven's doing that mother and son should meet — and Xuanzang came right up to the gate of the private yamen to beg.

Liu Hong is away again, and this time the narrator names the cause outright: 天叫, Heaven ordered it. 母子相會 takes 子 as zǐ and the mutual 相 as xiāng; 抄化 is another word for begging alms.

Now Yin Wenjiao had had a dream in the night, dreaming of the waned moon grown round again, and thought to herself:

月缺再圓, the waned moon coming round again. In Chinese the full moon stands for a family complete and gathered, so a moon filling out is about as unambiguous a dream of reunion as the language offers. It is the same roundness as 團圓.

'Of my mother-in-law I have no word; my husband was murdered by this villain;'

音信, sound and letter: word from somebody. She is counting her losses in order, and this is the first of them — a mother-in-law she has heard nothing of in eighteen years.

'my own son I cast into the river — if anyone took and raised him, by my reckoning he would be eighteen now;'

兒子, son, here with 子 unstressed as zi: the everyday word, against the formal zǐ that the star-god used. 算來, reckoning it up — she has kept the count. He is eighteen.

'perhaps today Heaven means us to meet — there is no telling.'

相會, to meet, with the mutual 相. Then 亦未可知, there is no telling: she talks herself down from the hope in the same breath that raises it.

Just as she was musing, she suddenly heard someone before the yamen chanting sutras and calling out 'Alms!'

沉吟 is to turn a thing over half aloud, sunk in it. And right on cue, a voice at the gate chanting scripture and calling for alms. The novel is not trying to hide its machinery here. It wants you to feel the timing.

and the lady, taking the chance, came out and asked, 'Where have you come from?'

乘便, taking the chance while it is going, with 乘 as chéng. Her first question is not who are you but where are you from, which is the question that gets her the answer.

Xuanzang answered, 'This poor monk is a disciple of the elder Faming of Gold Mountain Monastery.'

貧僧, this poor monk, is the standard humble self-reference for a cleric — poor in the sense of having renounced, not of being short of money. And the sentence carries the one piece of information that changes everything: Gold Mountain.

The lady said, 'Since you are a disciple of the elder of Gold Mountain...'

The line simply stops. Chinese fiction of this kind rarely leaves a sentence unfinished, which is why this one lands: she has heard the name of the temple and cannot yet say what she is thinking.

She called him into the yamen and had vegetarian food set before him to eat.

齋飯 is meatless food fit for a monk. Feeding him is entirely proper, and it is also a way of keeping him where she can go on looking at him.

Watching closely his bearing and his speech, she found him much like her husband.

好似, much like, with 似 as sì. She is not studying his face; she is watching 舉止言談, how he carries himself and how he talks — the inherited things nobody can put on deliberately. Recognition by family likeness is one of the oldest devices in the trade, and it is about to be checked against a document and a foot.