魚籃現身 The Fish-Basket Guanyin Revealed
行者道：「菩薩，既然如此，且待片時，我等叫陳家莊眾信人等，看看菩薩的金面：一則留恩；二來說此收怪之事，好教凡人信心供養。」菩薩道：「也罷，你快去叫來。」那八戒與沙僧一齊飛跑至莊前，高呼道：「都來看活觀音菩薩，都來看活觀音菩薩。」一莊老幼男女，都向河邊，也不顧泥水，都跪在裡面，磕頭禮拜。內中有善圖畫者，傳下影神，這才是魚籃觀音現身。當時菩薩就歸南海。行者道：「菩萨，既然如此，且待片时，我等叫陈家庄众信人等，看看菩萨的金面：一则留恩；二来说此收怪之事，好教凡人信心供养。」菩萨道：「也罢，你快去叫来。」那八戒与沙僧一齐飞跑至庄前，高呼道：「都来看活观音菩萨，都来看活观音菩萨。」一庄老幼男女，都向河边，也不顾泥水，都跪在里面，磕头礼拜。内中有善图画者，传下影神，这才是鱼篮观音现身。当时菩萨就归南海。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said: "Bodhisattva, since it is so, wait a little while. We will call the faithful folk of Chen Village to look upon your golden countenance: first to leave them your grace, and second to tell them of this taking of the fiend, so that mortal men may believe with a whole heart and make their offerings."
看看 kàn reduplicated, "to have a look at." 金面, the golden countenance; 留恩, to leave one's grace behind; 好教 教 jiào, causative; 信心供養 供 gòng — devotional offerings made to a buddha or bodhisattva, the 供 of the altar; distinct from gōng, providing for the living, as in the previous chapter's feeding of the pilgrims. The ； bisecting Wukong's speech is joined into one segment. His motive is missionary — to convert the villagers' fear of the demon into devotion to the Bodhisattva.
The Bodhisattva said: "Very well; go quickly and call them."
Utterance-initial 也罷: 罷 bà, the assenting "very well." The Bodhisattva grants the request and sends the disciples to summon the village.
Eight Rules and Sha Monk ran together at full speed to the front of the village, crying aloud: "Come, all of you, and see the living Guanyin Bodhisattva! Come and see the living Guanyin Bodhisattva!"
那八戒 deictic 那 nà; 都來看 都 dōu, 看 kàn; 觀音 觀 guān. The doubled cry is the villagers' summons — the whole settlement is called to the riverbank.
The whole village, old and young, men and women, went to the riverside; heedless of the mud and water, they all knelt down in it and knocked their heads in worship.
都向河邊 and 都跪 都 dōu ×2. 磕頭禮拜, to kowtow in reverence. The villagers kneel in the mud — the same mud the demon had walled his gate with, now the ground of their devotion.
Among them was one skilled in drawing, who handed down her likeness — and this is how the Fish-Basket Guanyin first showed her form. At that time the Bodhisattva went straight back to the Southern Sea.
內中 中 zhōng; 觀音 觀 guān; 當時 當 dāng. 傳下影神, to hand down a portrait — the aetiology of a real iconographic type, the 魚籃觀音 (Fish-Basket Guanyin), whose images derive, the novel claims, from this very scene.
The block supplies an origin-story for a well-known image. The 魚籃觀音, the Fish-Basket Guanyin, is a genuine and popular iconographic type — the Bodhisattva shown as a barefoot woman holding a basket of fish — and the novel here claims to explain it: a villager skilled in drawing caught her likeness at the riverbank, 傳下影神, and every later image descends from that sketch. It is a characteristic move of the book, grounding a piece of living devotional culture in an incident of the pilgrimage.
Wukong's reasoning is frankly evangelical. He asks the Bodhisattva to stay and be seen not for the villagers' comfort but so that 凡人信心供養 — so that mortals will believe and make offerings. The chapter that began with a demon extorting child-sacrifices from Chen Village ends with the same village kneeling in the river-mud to the power that freed them, their fear converted into a cult. The Bodhisattva permits it briefly and then returns to the Southern Sea without ceremony, exactly as she came — the informality of the whole episode preserved to its end.