The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (102 page)

7
. Fire fills the sky: that is, the sun.

8
. Mutual production and mutual conquest:
xiangsheng xiangke
. These are two of the several traditional views of how the Five Phases operate, either one phase acting as a parent of another (mutual production) or as that overcomes or vanquishes another phase (mutual conquest). See SCC 2 (1970): 255–61; Porkert, pp. 51–54.

9
. Duck-head green: the bright green feathers often seen around a certain part of a duck’s neck, used to describe the color of water. Hence also the name of the Yalu Jiang
, the river bordering northeastern China and Korea.

10
. Buddha’s head: Buddha’s hair is said to have the color of ultramarine. The novel’s line of poem is also an adaptation of another line by the Song poet Li Bu
(967–1028). See his composition on the “West Lake
”:
,
, in
Lin Hejing shiji
(Shanghai, 1938), p. 21.

11
. See JW 1, chapter 7.

12
. Cinnabar field:
dantian
, alternately, elixir field. Generally regarded as a reference to the lower abdomen. For further discussion, see JW 1, chapter 19, n. 9.

13
. Three passes:
sanguan
, traditionally understood as the upper, middle, and lower parts of the body. See the
Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wên
or
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine
, trans. and ed. Ilza Veith (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 186–93, for a description of the division and subdivisions of these regions.

14
. Bright hall: see JW 1, chapter 22, n. 4, for explanation of this term.

CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO

1
. In the day-count of traditional Chinese culture, a cyclic system of sixty days is established by various alternate combinations made of the series of ten celestial stems (
tiangan
) and twelve earthly branches (
dizhi
). The cycle begins anew after sixty combinations are reached. In any thirty-day period, therefore, it is likely that the stem
xin
, which is the eighth of the ten celestial stems, will appear three times in various combinations with the branches. For further discussion of this important calendrical scheme from antiquity crucial for several forms of traditional religious calendars and their understanding of time, see the entry on “
ganzhi
” and bibliography in ET 1: 435–37.