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hunxi-guilai · 3 years

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清河诀 QINGHEJUE / QINGHE FAREWELL

INTRODUCTION:

清河诀 Qinghe Jue (Spotify link here; YouTube link here) is the tenth song on the CQL companion album, sung by Ayanga as the character song for both Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue.

This is the first song on the album that is attributed to two characters, and the only multi-character song to use a single voice. I am inclined to read the lyrics from Nie Huaisang’s point of view, and my translation reflects that particular perspective. However, it is worth noting that there are actually very few pronouns in this song at all, which is particularly significant in the last iteration of the chorus, as those lines could conceivably be interpreted either as Nie Huaisang describing his actions, or the voice of Nie Mingjue’s ghost, issuing commands.

I’ve rendered the title as “Qinghe Farewell,” but the specific connotations of the character 诀 jue implies not just “parting,” but “eternal parting”—usually with the death of one party. Correspondingly, I’ve translated it as “eternal parting” in the lyrics, where the binome of 诀别 juebie is explicitly evoked. 诀 jue on its own also has other relevant meanings; it can be paired with 秘 mi or 窍 qiao to form 秘诀 mijue or 诀窍 jueqiao, both of which are used to refer to a secret or trick to success. I felt the need to mention this element of cleverness and cunning to this meaning of 决 jue, as it feels all too appropriate for our director Nie.

PRODUCTION STAFF:

Lyricist：林乔 Lin Qiao / 刘恩汛 Liu Enxun

Composer / Arranger / Producer：陈雪燃 Chen Xueran

Cello：Ro Rowan

Violin：Steve C. Chiu

Additional Strings：NEM Studios Session Strings

Recording Engineer：Jacob Boyd

Mixing / Mastering：NEM Studios

Executive Producer：宋鹏飞 Song Pengfei

Producer：黄喜luffy / 王鑫 Wang Xin

Performed by: 阿云嘎 Ayanga

LYRICS + TRANSLATION:

看似冷若刀锋的责言 / Words of harsh reprimands, like cold saber’s edge

护尽折扇翩翩的少年[1] / protecting the elegant youth who carried folding fans

岁寒浓尽热血同脉相连 / While winter froze over the land, warm blood linked our veins

真心温暖如焰 / Sincerity and warmth, like flames

辉映在你我之间 / reflect in the space between you and me

不净世 / The Unclean Realm—

深情[2]界 / a place of deep love—

几生相牵 / how many lives, intertwined

不绝天 / Unending sky—

兄弟缘[3] / brothers’ fate—

何时再见 / when will we see each other again?

清河诀别成一生恸点 / Our eternal parting at Qinghe gave birth to deep sorrow and pain

旧梦方醒却昨日渐远 / When I wake from old dreams, the yesterdays grow more distant

遥对明月长叹 / Gazing up at the bright moon—I sigh long, and say,

能再看你一眼 / “To see you once more,

刀山火海[4]也愿 / I would be willing to cross mountains of knives, oceans of flame”

命运离愁黯淡的辗转 / The cycling and turning of fate and sorrow, parting and darkness

几番孤身怅惘的孑然 / The solitude of sorrows and worries, faced again and again, alone

阴阳殊途藏满泪光残喘[5] / On separate roads, dead and alive, hiding and concealing all—the light of tears, a dying breath

但求沉冤昭雪[6] / But in seeking to reveal the truth of unrighted wrongs

十年隐忍也无憾 / I do not regret ten years of patient endurance

不净世 / The Unclean Realm—

深情界 / a place of deep love—

几生相牵 / how many lives, intertwined

不绝天 / Unending sky—

兄弟缘 / brothers’ fate—

何时再见 / when will we see each other again?

清河诀别成一生恸点 / Our eternal parting at Qinghe gave birth to deep sorrow and pain

旧梦方醒却昨日渐远 / When I wake from old dreams, the yesterdays grow more distant

遥对明月长叹 / Gazing up at the bright moon—I sigh long, and say,

能再看你一眼 / “To see you once more,

火海也愿 / I would be willing to cross oceans of flame”

清河诀别成一生恸点 / Our eternal parting at Qinghe gave birth to deep sorrow and pain

尘世棋局里分明恩怨 / I discern between favor and resentment in this chessboard of a mortal realm

悲怆不动声色 / Sorrow and sadness, unshown on my face

笑握风云变幻[7] / Smiling, manipulating the storm’s changing with a hand

是爱万里不散[8] / This is a love that does not dissolve, even over great distance

ANNOTATIONS:

[1] 折扇 zheshan is the type of folding fan that is Nie Huaisang’s signature accessory. This line does not actually contain a verb connecting the “elegant youth” to the “folding fan,” so I inserted “carry” to help make the line make sense in English.

[2] 深情 shenqing means “deep feeling” or “profound love,” and I find this line particularly powerful because it is deliberately going against the image of the Unclean Realm as a place of harshness and warfare that we see in CQL. The character 情 qing is also a particularly difficult one to untangle—it can mean “affair, situation,” or “feeling, emotion” or “love” (platonic, romantic, familial, all of the above). The point is that there are a lot of strong feelings involved, and that connection is not one that can be easily broken.

[3] I want to unpack the character 缘 yuan just a bit in this line—I rendered it here as “fate,” which isn’t wrong, but there’s a bit more to be discussed. 缘 yuan is often seen in the company of 分 fen, and the binome 缘分 yuanfen is often used to refer to a predestined relationship. The relationship could be lovers, could be friends, could be ruler-minister, or patron-artist—the point is, there is a level of natural affinity in the relationship such that someone might comment “oh, it was 缘分 yuanfen that the two of you would meet.”

分 fen has many meanings, one of which is “allotment”—as a result, star-crossed lovers are often described as 有缘没有分 you yuan meiyou fen / “in possession of yuan, lacking fen.” They have just had enough fortune to meet—that is the predestined part of the relationship. Alas, they lack the 分 fen, the allotment (whether of a divine and fated variety, or a more pedestrian kind based on unequal social status) to remain together.

How does this all relate to the Nie brothers in this song? Well, there is something to be said about the relationship of destiny and predestination to their brotherhood, and the nature of saber cultivation. Likewise, there is something powerful about describing their relationship in terms of 缘分 yuanfen—it emphasizes just how intertwined their lives are, and how much the two of them care about each other, despite words that may seem “like cold saber’s edge.”

[4] We’ve met these “mountains of daggers, oceans of flame” before in 曲尽陈情 Qujinchenqing; gloss duplicated below:

火海 huohai, literally “oceans of flame,” is the second half of the chengyu 刀山火海 daoshan huohai—“mountains of daggers, oceans of flame.” It is used to describe trials of great difficulty in the vein of “crossing mountains made of daggers and fording oceans of flame.” As far as I can tell, it traces its origins to an early, Eastern Han translation of a Buddhist text by 安士高 An Shigao, 《佛说鬼问目连经》—the particular line is “我一生已来，或登刀山剑树地狱。或堕火坑镬汤地狱,” which isn’t quite “oceans of flame” but gets very close.

[5] (sighs, places head in hands) these three lines are like… a free-associated pile of words stacked on each other. Despite my best efforts, I could not marshal them into the semblance of intelligible sentences. I can, however, poke a bit at some evocative binomes:

辗转 zhanzhuan / rendered in this line as “cycling and turning,” reflecting one of its glosses on Pleco—to pass from hand to hand, to move from place to place. Another valence would be its meaning in the chengyu 辗转难眠 zhanzhuan nanmian, “to toss and turn, unable to fall asleep.”

殊途 shutu / rendered in this line as “on separate roads,” the emphasis here is on the separate roads (i.e. the Nie brothers do not travel together, and the 阴阳 yinyang in this line implies that their roads are separated in the 阴 yin / deathly and 阳 yang / living realms).

[6] I have, alas, somewhat defanged the translation of this line: 但求沉冤昭雪 “But in seeking to reveal the truth of unrighted wrongs…” Firstly, 沉冤 chenyuan is more than “unrighted wrongs”—the first character, 沉 chen, means “to sink” as a verb, or “heavy, deep, profound” as an adjective. It lends a weight and entombed quality (i.e. must be unburied, exhumed) to 冤 yuan, which is already a very powerful word. Yes, 冤 yuan is both grievance and injustice, but feels almost cosmological in scale—a fundamental violation of moral principles. It also has legal valences of plaints, and plaintiffs; it has bloody valences of feuds, and revenge, and sin.

Meanwhile, 昭雪 zhaoxue is more than simply the revelation of a truth—it’s exoneration, vindication, absolution. It’s overturning the injustice of 冤 yuan and restoring the proper order of things. On top of that, it’s also public—it rewrites memory, clears false names, washes away deception and misconception.

[7] A more literal translation of this line might be something along the lines of “Smiling—grasping the rapid changes of the winds and clouds.” 风云 fengyun / “winds and clouds” (i.e. stormy weather) is a binome often used to describe dangerous (often political) situations. 握 wo literally means “to hold in the palm of one’s hand; to grasp” but the connotations here imply control.

[8] “A great distance,” here, is a loose way of interpreting 万里 wanli / “ten thousand li” (里 li being the unit of distance that amounts to half a kilometer). The exact measurement is not actually significant, so I’ve elected to emphasize the distance rather than the number.

ONCE MORE WITH CLARITY VERSION:

Words of harsh reprimands, like cold saber’s edge

protecting the elegant youth who carried folding fans

While winter froze over the land, warm blood linked our veins

Sincerity and warmth, like flames

reflect in the space between you and me

The Unclean Realm—

a place of deep love—

how many lives, intertwined

Unending sky—

brothers’ fate—

when will we see each other again?