Life of Many Hatreds

• 1. Contrary to what this translation might lead you to believe, there are no actual pronouns in these three lines. I’ve elected to add the second-person pronoun for 1) English grammar, 2) clarity, and 3) based on the appearance of the second person pronoun in the following line. The lyrics of this song appear to be a self-directed monologue.
• 2. 领悟 lingwu is sometimes seen in a Buddhist valence to refer to enlightenment, but I’ve fudged the meaning sideways into “revelation” for clarity.
• 3. 城府 chengfu is an interesting binome in that the characters composing it are very concrete—“city” and “government office.” Usually, this binome is used to refer to people with sly cunning or shrewd discernment. This line plays on the concrete meaning of 城府 chengfu by prefacing it with 搭建 dajian / “to build,” such that there is a concrete valence of this line—to construct a city/building—as well as a metaphorical one—to construct a grand and subtle project.
• 4. 朽木 xiumu / “rotten wood” is a particularly notable insult in the literary tradition, going all the way back to the 《论语》 Lunyu / Analects, in which Kongzi, upon observing a student sleeping during the day, remarks disparagingly that 朽木不可雕也 rotten wood cannot be carved. 朽木 xiumu specifically suggests that a person is inferior based on inherent, inborn qualities, which is a particularly sensitive area for Jin Guangyao.
• 5. 劫数 jieshu is another technical Buddhist term; it can refer to a kalpa (and thus becomes a shorthand for “extremely long period of time”) and later takes on the meaning of “a set amount of bad luck/fated difficulties in a lifespan.” This line pivots on the construction that Jin Guangyao’s 命定 mingding / “fate” is transmuting into 劫数 jieshu / “bad luck/trials and difficulties.”
• 6. We’ve seen 殊途 shutu before in 清河诀 Qinghejue; here, it is likely being deployed in the figurative valence of 殊途同归 shutu tonggui / “different roads, same return.” In essence, this chengyu gestures at the different methods one can take to accomplish a goal, usually with the implication that some methods are more, ah, morally compliant than others.
• 7. This line is extremely ambiguous, so I feel like I should talk about some interpretive parameters and alternate translations. Firstly, 愿 yuan can be read as “to wish or hope for,” or “to be willing to [do something].” 懂 dong is fairly straightforward—“to understand” or “understanding.” As a result, alternate translations of this line could be “you wish for understanding” or “you are willing to understand” depending on what implied subject you read for 愿 yuan. However, no pronoun (or indeed, subject at all) exists in this line, so exactly who is doing the wishing or understanding is left ambiguous. Following the precedent in previous iterations of the chorus, the second-person pronoun seems a safe bet; the result would be Jin Guangyao speaking to himself, asking himself if anyone would still be willing to know him, even should all his secrets be revealed. I’ve translated this line as part and parcel of the previous line, where the lyrics ask how many people are willing to know your true face? As a result, the subject becomes a vague “people,” which gets us to the interpretation of this line as “how many people would be willing to understand you?”