金鼻白毛老鼠精陷空山無底洞 · 52
Leaf 52 of the pilgrimage · 地湧夫人 Lady Rising from the Ground
Gold-Nosed Rat Spirit 金鼻白毛老鼠精
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 地湧夫人 “Lady Rising from the Ground”
She has eaten six young monks in three nights and still wants to be married; the thing in her cave that ends the argument is an incense burner with two names on it.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 80
Five Days Tied to a Tree
黑松林She was tied to a tree at the waist with her lower half buried in the earth, five days there, telling the monk of robbers and a ruined journey. Wukong saw the shape under the rope and said nothing while the cut was made.
- ch. 80
Pious Words Breathed in an Ear
善言入耳On a fair wind she breathed a few soft pious phrases into the monk's ears, which is all the book says it takes, and the party took her to the temple and fed her — an act he called catching a fish by letting water collect.
- ch. 81
Six Pairs of Monk's Shoes
六個僧鞋At the Zhenhai temple, three nights of her company produced six missing young monks; their caps and shoes were stacked in the back garden and their bones were not, and Wukong stayed up to watch it happen.
- ch. 82
An Embroidered Shoe in Her Place
花鞋替身Twice she left an embroidered shoe standing in her place — first the left foot, then the right — and the second time she took the monk, the baggage and the horse, which is why Bajie said three is a fair number and why Wukong wept at a saddle with nobody in it.
- ch. 82
Beneath Bottomless Pit Cave
無底洞The mountain arch read Pitfall Mountain, Bottomless Pit Cave over a hole like a jar mouth in a stone ten-odd li across; inside was a three-hundred-li warren of chambers, and a banquet being got ready for a wedding she intended as a harvest.
- ch. 82
The Peach That Swallowed a Monkey
桃中藏身The monk was told to offer her a red peach, the sun-facing fruit being the one that ripens, and Wukong rode inside it; she swallowed him whole without biting, and he began eating her liver and five viscera from the inside while she pleaded.
- ch. 83
The Gold Burner and Two Tablets
香火牌位In a small dark south-east back room, with a pot of flowers and a clump of bamboo, stood a large flowing-gold incense burner and two tablets: honoured father, Heavenly King Li; honoured elder brother, the Third Prince Nezha.
- ch. 83
An Indictment from Two Tablets
御狀Wukong took the tablets as evidence and filed an indictment at the Spirit-Court Hall; Li Jing arrived furious at a defeat five hundred years old, bound him with the demon-tether and reached for his sword, and Nezha had to bar the blade with his own.
結局 The ending
Li Jing panics: he is at home without his pagoda. Nezha explains that long ago she stole the Buddha's flowers on Vulture Peak, was caught, and was spared on the line that water fed for fish is never fished. She keeps three names — rat, Half-Guanyin, Lady Rising from the Ground — and is bound with her whole nest by imperial decree, while Bajie and Sha are refused the privilege of mincing her.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials