The poem behind it: the Sixth Dalai Lama
At the close of Tong Hua’s novel stand two lines borrowed from Tsangyang Gyatso (1683–1706), the Sixth Dalai Lama — a monk-king remembered less for doctrine than for love poems: 第一最好不相見，如此便可不相戀 Best of all, never to meet — then there is no falling in love. 第二最好不相知，如此便可不相思 Next best, never to know each other — then there is no longing. The logic is gentle and merciless: love is a wound, so the only sure way to avoid the wound is never to open the door. Readers of the novel loved these lines so much that they added more — stanza after stanza, “best not to keep company… best not to make a vow…” — until the whole grew into a famous internet poem now called the “Ten If-Onlys” (十诫诗). (Strictly, only the first two couplets are the Dalai Lama’s; the rest is a collective, modern extension. It’s worth knowing, because the poem is so often quoted as if all of it were his.) The theme song “Yi Nian Zhi Zhuo” is the drama’s own echo of that poem — and the fact that its female voice, Alan, carries Tibetan blood gives the Tibetan source a strange, fitting homecoming.What the song is saying
The song is a duet, and the two voices circle each other. He sings of helplessness: from the very first glance, he was lost — a moth flying into the flame, knowing it is ruin, unable to stop. She sings the Dalai Lama’s defense: best not to meet, best not to even think of you — because one step closer and she, too, will fall, step by step, into love. Together, at the end, they reach the same verdict: it was time’s mistake that made them miss each other; and though they always knew it was a bitter fruit, neither wants to escape this one moment. The phrase the whole song settles on is four characters — qíng shēn yuán qiǎn (情深缘浅): the love was deep, but the bond fate allowed was shallow.The same longing, a thousand years earlier, in Japan
Here is what made me catch my breath. The very same thought — better never to have met — sits at the heart of one of Japan’s most famous classical poems, written around the tenth century and collected in the Hyakunin Isshu (the “One Hundred Poets” anthology), poem 44, by Fujiwara no Asatada: 逢ふことの 絶えてしなくは なかなかに 人をも身をも 恨みざらまし Au koto no / taete shi naku wa / nakanaka ni / hito o mo mi o mo / urami zarareji “If meeting had never existed at all, then — strangely — I would resent neither you, nor myself.” It is the Dalai Lama’s logic, in Japanese court dress, seven hundred years before him: because we met, I am left resenting you (for not loving me enough) and myself (for loving at all); had we never met, there would be nothing to resent.The twist they share: no regret
And yet — this is the beautiful part — neither the song nor the poem actually wishes the meeting away. The Japanese word nakanaka ni (“strangely,” “on the contrary”) quietly admits that the wish is impossible: he cannot truly unmeet her, and some part of him would not. And the song says it outright: knowing it was a bitter fruit, I still do not want to escape this moment. The “best never to meet” is not a real regret. It is the sound a heart makes when it has loved past the point of return, and is trying — and failing — to wish it hadn’t. A Tibetan monk-king around 1700, a Chinese novelist and her readers in our own century, a Japanese courtier a thousand years ago. Three cultures, three languages, one longing: better never to have met — and yet I would not undo it for the world. — Notes. “Yi Nian Zhi Zhuo” (2011): composed by Yan Yidan, performed by Hu Ge and Alan, theme of Scarlet Heart (步步惊心). The first two couplets of the “Ten If-Onlys” are attributed to the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso; the longer poem is a modern extension by readers of Tong Hua’s novel. The song’s lyrics are copyrighted and are described rather than reproduced here. The Hyakunin Isshu poem (Fujiwara no Asatada, no. 44) and the Dalai Lama’s couplets are public domain; the translations are my own.← Back to the full guide: The Songs of Empresses in the Palace & The Legend of Mi Yue Explained