迎陽驛前 The Posthouse of Welcomed Yang
一行前進，又見那市井上房屋齊整，鋪面軒昂，一般有賣鹽賣米，酒肆茶房；鼓角樓臺通貨殖，旗亭候館掛簾櫳。師徒們轉彎抹角，忽見有一女官侍立街下，高聲叫道：「遠來的使客，不可擅入城門。請投館驛，註名上簿，待下官執名奏駕，驗引放行。」三藏聞言下馬，觀看那衙門上有一匾，上書「迎陽驛」三字。長老道：「悟空，那村舍人家傳言是實，果有迎陽之驛。」沙僧笑道：「二哥，你卻去照胎泉邊照照，看可有雙影？」八戒道：「莫弄我。我自吃了那盞兒落胎泉水，已此打下胎來了，還照他怎的？」三藏回頭吩咐道：「悟能，謹言，謹言。」遂上前與那女官作禮。一行前进，又见那市井上房屋齐整，铺面轩昂，一般有卖盐卖米，酒肆茶房；鼓角楼台通货殖，旗亭候馆挂帘栊。师徒们转弯抹角，忽见有一女官侍立街下，高声叫道：「远来的使客，不可擅入城门。请投馆驿，注名上簿，待下官执名奏驾，验引放行。」三藏闻言下马，观看那衙门上有一匾，上书「迎阳驿」三字。长老道：「悟空，那村舍人家传言是实，果有迎阳之驿。」沙僧笑道：「二哥，你却去照胎泉边照照，看可有双影？」八戒道：「莫弄我。我自吃了那盏儿落胎泉水，已此打下胎来了，还照他怎的？」三藏回头吩咐道：「悟能，谨言，谨言。」遂上前与那女官作礼。
逐句解 Line by line
The party went on, and saw further that in the marketplace the houses stood trim and even and the shopfronts rose handsome and high; just as anywhere else there were sellers of salt and sellers of rice, wine-shops and tea-houses;
一行 is the travelling party, and 行 is xíng; the nominal háng is licensed nowhere in this chapter. 鋪面 is pù, the shopfront. 那 is nà. The whole inventory is of ordinary commerce, which is the point: the country is strange in exactly one respect and unremarkable in all others.
Drum-towers and terraces opened upon the traffic in goods; flag-pavilions and post-houses hung out their blinds and lattices.
A seven-plus-seven couplet embedded inline, with no verse indent of its own in the 世德堂本 and no introducing tag. It therefore stays PROSE and the passage keeps three chips, per the standing ruling on unmarked inline couplets; it is given its own segment so that the parallelism survives into the English. 貨殖 is zhí, the classical term for trade, from the 史記 chapter of that name.
As master and disciples turned the corners and rounded the bends, they suddenly saw a woman official standing in attendance at the foot of the street, who called out in a loud voice, 「Envoys come from afar may not enter the city gate unbidden.
的 is the particle de. 一女官 gives 一 as yì before the third-tone 女. 女官 is a woman holding office — the first individual of this country the pilgrims meet, and she meets them with a regulation.
Pray put up at the hostel and enter your names upon the register; wait while this humble officer carries the names before the throne, and when your passport has been examined you shall be let through.」
註名上簿 and 執名奏駕 are the vocabulary of clerkly procedure. 驗引 is the inspection of travel papers; 放行 takes 行 as xíng. 下官 is the standard self-deprecating first person of an official addressing a superior.
Hearing this, Tripitaka dismounted and looked. Above the office there hung a tablet, and upon it were written three characters: Posthouse of Welcomed Yang.
觀看 takes 觀 as guān and 看 as kàn. 一匾 gives 一 as yì before the third-tone 匾. 迎陽驛 is the posthouse the old woman named at ch.53 — welcoming the yang that the country otherwise wholly lacks. The English keeps 三字 as 'three characters' because the count is of graphs, not of English words.
「Wukong,」 said the elder, 「what the people at the village cottage told us was true. There is indeed a Posthouse of Welcomed Yang.」
長老 takes 長 as zhǎng. 村舍 is shè, and the reference is to the household of ch.53 that first explained the country. 果有 — 'there is indeed' — registers the small satisfaction of a report confirmed.
Sha Monk laughed and said, 「Second brother, why not go over to the Fetus-Reflecting Spring and take a look at yourself, and see whether there is a double shadow?」
照胎泉 is the spring that shows a pregnancy by reflection, named at ch.53. 雙影 — a double shadow — would show a second life in the body. Sha Monk is ordinarily the party's silent one, and it is worth noting that the chapter gives him the joke.
「Don't make sport of me,」 said Eight Rules. 「Since I drank that cupful of water from the Spring that Dissolves the Fetus the thing has been brought down already. What is there left to look at?」
盞兒 takes the diminutive suffix er. 落胎泉 is luò. 還 is hái, 'still'. 怎的 closes on the particle de. Both 了 are aspectual. The J2 join takes 八戒道：「莫弄我。— attribution plus a three-graph clause with the quotation left open — onto the sentence that completes the speech.
Tripitaka turned his head and charged him: 「Wuneng — guard your tongue. Guard your tongue.」
吩咐 is fēn fù. The doubled 謹言 is the same instruction Tripitaka gave the whole party in the chapter's first passage, now reduced to two words and aimed at one disciple.
Then he went forward and made his courtesies to the woman official.
作禮 is the formal salutation. The passage closes on Tripitaka doing the correct thing correctly, which is the last moment in the chapter at which that will be simple.
The marketplace description is the quiet centre of the chapter's argument. Trim houses, high shopfronts, salt and rice, wine-shops and tea-houses, drum-towers, flag-pavilions, post-houses with their blinds hung out — this is the standard furniture of a prosperous walled town in the novel, and it is deployed here without a single mark of strangeness. Western Liang is not a wilderness or a demon's cave. It is a functioning state with a customs procedure.
That procedure is the passage's second move, and it is delivered by an official who does everything correctly. Envoys may not enter unbidden; put up at the hostel; register your names; the throne will be informed; papers will be inspected; you will be let through. Nothing here is hostile and nothing is even irregular. The pilgrims have been received by a bureaucracy, and the danger they are in — which is real, and which the poem has already named — will be transmitted to them entirely through proper channels.
The tablet over the door supplies the joke that the whole sequence has been building toward. 迎陽 — Welcomed Yang — is the name of a posthouse, an ordinary official designation of the kind any town might carry, and it is also a precise statement of what this country wants from the four men now standing under it. The narrative does not comment. Tripitaka reads the tablet and remarks only that the villagers' report was accurate.
Sha Monk's joke about the Fetus-Reflecting Spring closes the loop with the previous chapter and does something the novel does sparingly: it lets the pilgrims be funny about their own recent humiliation. Eight Rules answers flatly and factually, which is funnier than indignation would have been, and Tripitaka's two-word reprimand — the same instruction he issued in the chapter's opening passage, now shrunk to 謹言, 謹言 — shows how little of his careful protocol has survived contact with the place.