About this passageYen Hui was the disciple Confucius praised above all the others and the one whose early death he mourned hardest. The detail here is deliberately domestic — one dish for rice, one gourd for water, a back lane — and the claim is narrow: not that Hui was indifferent to the conditions, nor that the poverty was good, but that his gladness ran on something the conditions could not reach. The repetition at either end is in the original.
The Master said, "Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui! With a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, while others could not have endured the distress, he did not allow his joy to be affected by it. Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui!"
In plainer words
What was admirable about Hui: a single bowl of rice, a single gourd of water, a poor back street. Anyone else would have found it unbearable, and he did not let it touch his gladness. That is what was admirable about Hui.
A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.