Blue Bone

The song was written and sung by Cui Jian, from his album Show You Colour. Translated by me.

I don't feel sorry

nor am I pissed off

I've made the basic efforts

and received the basic education

I'm a spring flower

blooming in the spring accidentally



My father told me that if i wanted to be somebody

I would have to study hard and get high marks

but I didn't buy it then

now I still don't buy it



For me the meaning of life depends on individual independence and personal fulfillment

So I got myself a job before graduation

I wanted to do what i liked most

regardless of how much i earned

So I turned out to be nobody but a writer

at first i just wanted to get the complaints off my chest with a pen

but who knows that once started i just couldn’t' stop

as an old saying goes that a living person won't be killed by the filling urine in the bladder

as long as i've got my pen

nobody is going to stand in my way

this is my cause

where my interest lies

can there be any job more interesting than this one

which doesn't keep me busy due to the little amount of money

the remaining time it allows me to ponder upon the meaning of life



the tripod can stand still because it has three legs

without any one of which it will move unsteadily

my life must also have three factors so I can grasp the happiness

it is the happiness that people are living for



the first one is a cause as mentioned above

work happily and earn money that will support yourself

speak out and write down what you want to say, say it completely

the beautiful emptiness will only appear when it has been done completely



the second one is health

for if your body goes ill

you can't enjoy what you get

so I keep running three times a week plus swimming

only when you do thinking during sports can it turn your mind on



the third one is of course love

in fact girls have no idea of the lads' weakness

in days of no love, you have more mates

a man with more time at hand makes more friends

the lads can either tell truths or lies when they are talking about love

but it can only be true when his heart twitches in front of a girl

when you are truly in love, theories are all bogus

the pain is not bogus when you break up



why no body has ever told me

that someone is after me

is it that I'm too busy and my feeling goes dumb

or is it because that my desire goes wild when body gains its independence



anyway, the principle of "three legs" sounds simple

but it's hard to practice even for you to get two of them

for now money and women all demand a healthy body

who can tell me how much effort i have to make to find my love?



red, yellow and blue

represent man's soul, body and mind respectively

now the three colors are all buried by mud

just like the present society which is like a dye vat

the surrounding yellow flesh have blinded our souls

I have to distort myself so that I can look up

and see there is a blue patch of sky rarely seen

red has polluted the blood

I can't tell which is warm, blood or heart?

the sunshine and lights are both cast upon my body

i will either choose solitude or downfall

the blue sky has given me infinite rationality

it looks bitter to bear

but only the infinity can give me the endless power



father, I'm just a spring flower

that grows accidentally in the spring

because my bone is blue

(trumpet blown)