老黿出水 The Old Turtle Appears
正都在河邊上吵鬧，忽聽得河中間高叫：「孫大聖不要打船，花費人家財物。我送你師徒們過去。」眾人聽說，個個心驚，膽小的走了回家，膽大的戰兢兢貪看。須臾，那水裡鑽出一個怪來，你道怎生模樣：正都在河边上吵闹，忽听得河中间高叫：「孙大圣不要打船，花费人家财物。我送你师徒们过去。」众人听说，个个心惊，胆小的走了回家，胆大的战兢兢贪看。须臾，那水里钻出一个怪来，你道怎生模样：
逐句解 Line by line
They were all in an uproar of haggling at the riverside when suddenly, from the middle of the river, came a loud cry: "Great Sage Sun, do not build a boat, do not waste the people's goods and money. I will carry you and your master across."
正都在 都 dōu; 聽得 得 dé; 河中間 中 zhōng, 間 jiān. The 。 inside the cry is joined into one segment; the voice from midstream interrupts the boat-building and turns the crossing into something stranger.
When the people heard it, every one of them took fright. The faint-hearted ran home; the bold stood watching in fear and trembling.
走了 了 le; 貪看 看 kàn. 戰兢兢, trembling — the villagers' alarm at a talking thing rising from the water they had so lately feared.
In a moment, a monster bored up out of the water. Consider what it looked like:
那水裡 deictic 那 nà. 你道怎生模樣 with the colon is the presentational verse-tag — the four couplets following describe the old turtle, and prose and verse form one passage.
A square-headed numinous creature, no common kind; / by ninefold workings of the spirit, styled the Water Immortal.
號水仙: 號 read hào, "to be styled, named" — pypinyin gives it correctly here, but the graph is on the watch, having read háo ("to howl") earlier in the chapter. 九助靈機, the ninefold aid of the numinous spring — an old attribute of the divine tortoise.
Trailing his tail, he can draw out a thousand ages of life; / hiding his body, he lies quiet in the deeps of a hundred rivers.
曳尾, to drag the tail — an allusion to the Zhuangzi's tortoise that would rather drag its tail in the mud alive than be honoured dead. 千紀, a thousand ages; 百川淵, the deeps of the hundred rivers.
Churning the waves, leaping the billows, he buffets the river-bank; / facing the sun, meeting the wind, he lies at the sea's edge.
向日朝風: 朝 read cháo, "to face toward." The couplet gives the turtle the two postures of his kind — violent in the water, basking at the margin.
Nurturing his breath and holding the numen, he truly has the Way: / for many a year the powder-crusted, scabby-headed turtle.
癩頭黿: 黿 (yuán), the great soft-shelled turtle; 癩頭, scabby-headed. The verse ends by deflating its own grandeur — a creature of the Way, and also a mangy old river-turtle. The comedy is affectionate.
The old turtle's descriptive verse is built on a double register, dignified and homely at once, and it names its ancestry openly. 曳尾, trailing the tail, is a direct allusion to the parable in the Zhuangzi, where the sacred tortoise of Chu, its shell honoured on the altar, would rather be the live turtle dragging its tail in the mud; the line claims for this creature the Daoist preference for humble life over exalted death. The other attributes — the square head, the ninefold numinous workings, the thousand-year lifespan — belong to the ancient Chinese lore of the divine tortoise, the 神龜 of oracle and cosmogram.
And then the last line punctures all of it: 多年粉蓋癩頭黿, the powder-crusted, scabby-headed turtle of many years. The verse grants him the Way and calls him mangy in the same breath, and the incongruity is exactly the point — this is a genuine adept in the body of a river-turtle, and the chapter, which has just shown the Bodhisattva of Mercy barefoot and whittling, is entirely at home with sanctity in humble dress. The turtle's intervention also completes a piece of foreshadowing: the sign over the demon's gate read 水黿之第, the Mansion of the Water Turtle, and here at last is the turtle whose mansion it was, come to reclaim his part in the story.