The lady sent her attendant maids away and asked,

從婢, the maids who attend her. Clearing them out is the first practical step, and she takes it before she asks a single question.

'You, little master — did you take orders as a child, or in your middle years? What is your name? Have you father and mother?'

還是…還是 sets up an either-or, with 還 as hái; 中年, middle age, takes 中 as zhōng. Four questions, and the last is the one she actually wants answered: have you parents? She buries it at the end, the way people do when they are afraid of the reply.

Xuanzang answered, 'I did not take orders as a child, nor in middle years.'

He answers the small question twice over, in parallel, and answers neither half of it. It is a run-up: two negatives to build a rhythm before the thing he has to say.

'When I tell it — my wrong is as great as the sky, my grievance deep as the sea:'

冤有天來大，仇有海樣深 — the wrong as big as the sky, the grievance as deep as the sea. Two lines built to match each other clause for clause, which is what popular storytelling reaches for when a feeling needs a container.

'my father was murdered, and my mother seized by the villain.'

占 is to occupy, to take and hold: the word you use of ground. Applied to a person it is as ugly as it sounds, and the novel does nothing to soften it.

'My master, the elder Faming, bade me seek my mother within the Jiangzhou yamen.'

尋取, to seek and get — searching with an object in mind rather than wandering hopefully. He has just told a stranger, standing in her own house, that he is looking for his mother somewhere inside this building.

The lady asked, 'What is your mother's surname?'

Four characters, and everything rides on them. 姓甚, surnamed what, takes 甚 as shèn.

Xuanzang said, 'My mother is surnamed Yin, named Wenjiao.'

名喚, called by the name of. He gives her her own name, and has no idea he is doing it.

'My father is surnamed Chen, named Guangrui.'

And the second name is her husband's. She now holds both halves of it and has still said nothing.

'My infant name was Jiangliu, and my dharma-name given as Xuanzang.'

小名, his childhood name, is River-Float — which tells her exactly how he was found, if she needed telling. 法名取為 takes 為 as wéi.

The lady said, 'Wenjiao is none other than I. But what proof have you now?'

She identifies herself in five characters and then, without pausing, asks for proof. 憑據, evidence to lean on, is the hinge of the whole scene. Eighteen years of hoping have not made her careless.

Hearing that she was his mother, Xuanzang fell to both knees and wept aloud:

雙膝跪下, down on both knees. One knee is respect. Two is something else entirely.

'If my mother does not believe me, here are the blood-letter and undershirt for proof.'

為證, as proof, with 為 as wéi. And notice what he calls her: 我娘, my mum — the plain domestic word, not the formal 母親 he has used up to now.

Wenjiao took them and looked, and they were indeed true; mother and son embraced and wept.

果然是真, sure enough, genuine. The verification takes four characters and the embrace takes six. 母子相抱 keeps 子 as zǐ and takes the mutual 相, xiāng — an embrace being, by definition, something two people do to one another.