March of the Volunteers *
People's Republic of China, incl. HK and Macau
Arise! All those who refuse to be slaves!
Let our flesh and blood forge our new Great Wall!
The Chinese nation has arrived at its most perilous time.
Every person is forced to expel their final roar.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
One million hearts beating as one,
Brave the enemy's fire, March on!
Brave the enemy's fire, March on!
March on! March on! On!
Three Principles of the People
Republic of China (Taiwan)
Three Principles of the People,
The foundation of our party.
Using [this], [we] establish the Republic;
Using [this], [we] advance into a state of total peace.
Oh, you, warriors,
For the people, [be] the vanguard.
Without resting day or night,
Follow the Principles.
Swear [to be] diligent; swear [to be] courageous.
Obliged to be trustworthy; obliged to be loyal.
[With] one heart and one virtue,
[We] carry through until the very end.
The translations do not do the ROC anthem justice, as it is written in poetry form with poetic language in couplets of four-character lines, grouped in rhymed quatrains. In my opinion, Three Principles of the People best reflects the immense historical and cultural colossus that is China, one of the earliest nation/civilization states on Earth.
Being a 1930s wartime march, the PRC anthem is energetic and fun to sing/play compared to the regal and slower-tempo (aka boring) ROC anthem. But March of the Volunteers seems out of touch since China is not an Orwellian dictatorship in perpetual war (even if it looks like it at times). Chinese culture traditionally did not have a favourable view of the military and China is not interested in fighting these days, unless you use the metaphor business is war. But while this anthem does not reflect Chinese civilization well, this anthem perhaps reflect the mentality of Mainland China, that the country is moving from one crisis/opportunity to the next and the people's struggle is real. Very real. In this case, Hustlin' by Rick Ross serves just as well as PRC's national anthem.
Most people in HK and Macau do not like the PRC anthem, and it is complicated. I would how this might change if the PRC anthem is sung in Cantonese in HK and Macau, which is not without precedent. After WWII, the March of the Volunteers was also sung by communist guerrillas in British Malaya and its successors Malaysia and Indonesia. They were mostly southern Chinese, so the lyrics were sung in the regional Chinese dialects/languages, like Cantonese, Toisan, Hokkien, Teochew, etc.
* More accurate translation is March of the Volunteers Regiment
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