飛彩鳳 They Let the Phoenix Fly
今日怎麼發狠轉教打麼？」行者道：「師父怪你為嘴，誤了路程。快早收拾行李，備馬，免打！」那獃子真個怕打，跳起來穿了衣服，吆喝沙僧：「快起來，打將來了。」沙僧也隨跳起，各各收拾皆完。長老搖手道：「寂寂悄悄的，不要驚動寺僧。」連忙上馬開了山門，找路而去。這一去，正所謂：今日怎么发狠转教打么？」行者道：「师父怪你为嘴，误了路程。快早收拾行李，备马，免打！」那呆子真个怕打，跳起来穿了衣服，吆喝沙僧：「快起来，打将来了。」沙僧也随跳起，各各收拾皆完。长老摇手道：「寂寂悄悄的，不要惊动寺僧。」连忙上马开了山门，找路而去。这一去，正所谓：
畢竟不知天明時，酬謝之家端的如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知天明时，酬谢之家端的如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
and how is it that today he turns fierce and tells you to beat me instead?"
發狠 — to turn fierce, to harden. The complaint runs on for a second line because he is still half asleep and thoroughly aggrieved.
Pilgrim said, "The master blames you for your mouth, and for holding up the journey.
為嘴 — on account of the mouth. Here 為 is wèi, because of, and not the wéi it has taken eight times elsewhere in this chapter. 嘴 means both the mouth that eats and the mouth that answers back, and Eight Rules has been in trouble for both tonight.
Get the baggage together quickly, and the horse saddled, and avoid a beating!"
Four characters of instruction and two of threat, and it works instantly.
That idiot was truly afraid of a beating, and jumped up and put on his clothes, and hollered at Sha Monk: "Get up quick — the beating is coming!"
And he passes it straight on to the only person below him in the party. 吆喝 once more, with hè, and 打將來了 — the beating is on its way — has 將 in its everyday sense of taking hold of an action, not the commander sense it took twice in this chapter.
Sha Monk jumped up too, and each of them got everything ready.
Twelve characters. Sha Monk asks nothing, complains about nothing, and is packed first. He has done this in every chapter for seventy of them.
The elder waved his hand: "Quietly, quietly now — do not disturb the monks of the monastery."
寂寂悄悄的 — hushed and hushed, softly and softly. Two doubled words laid side by side, and the effect in Chinese is of somebody whispering while they say it.
In haste they mounted, opened the mountain gate, and found the road and went.
Twelve characters and the pilgrims are gone. No farewell, no thanks taken, no shrine visited. They open their hosts' front gate and leave.
This going away is just what they call:
正所謂 is the storyteller's cue for a closing couplet — a matched pair of lines, which is how almost every chapter of this novel ends before the final formula.
Quietly opening the jade cage, the coloured phoenix flies; secretly undoing the golden lock, the dragon goes free.
Fourteen characters, matched half against half, and every element answers: quietly against secretly, jade cage against golden lock, opening against undoing, phoenix against dragon. It is the standard couplet for an escape, and this novel uses it whenever somebody slips away from comfort. The joke is what they are escaping from. A cage and a lock ought to mean a demon's cave — and the pilgrims spent half this chapter in one. But they got out of that a month ago. What they are breaking out of here is a month of dinners.
In the end there is no knowing how the families who were to repay them fared when day broke; and for that you must listen to the next chapter's telling.
The formula that ends every chapter of the book. 且聽下回分解 — wait and hear the next instalment explained — is the voice of a man in a marketplace who wants you back tomorrow, preserved in print for four hundred years. 端的 appears one last time, with 的 as dì: how things really stood.
The chapter ends with an escape, and the escape is from hospitality. The closing couplet is the one the novel keeps for somebody slipping out of confinement — the phoenix out of the jade cage, the dragon out of the golden lock — and here it is spent on four monks sneaking out of a monastery gate before dawn to avoid another two hundred dinner invitations.
That is the chapter's argument, made one last time in fourteen characters. It opened with Tripitaka losing himself at a lantern festival because the lights were beautiful, and the demons who took him had been living for years on a town's willingness to give things to whatever looked holy. Now the town is giving things to the pilgrims instead — feasts, shrines, inscribed stones — and the pilgrims have to run. The trap is the same shape both times; only the goodwill has changed sides.
And then the storyteller's sign-off, unchanged since the days when this material was performed for money: in the end there is no knowing how it went, and for that you must listen to the next chapter. He does not tell you because he wants you back tomorrow.