Xresources escaping questions

[333fred]

Something pretty weird appears to be happening with how Xresources is handling unicode escapes, and I'm not quite sure where the failure is coming from. Here's the problem: for workspaces 1-4, I'm using nerd font symbols. For workspaces 5-10, I'm using kanji. Symbols 1-4 seem to work fine; xrdb -query shows them correctly. Symbols 5-10, though, just show in Xrdb as \U escape sequences; these escapes are then what are set by the bindsym calls, so $mod+5 shows that escape sequence in i3bar. As an example:

~/.config/regolith3/Xresources

wm.workspace.01.name: 1:
wm.workspace.02.name: 2:
wm.workspace.03.name: 3:
wm.workspace.04.name: 4:
wm.workspace.05.name: 5:五
wm.workspace.06.name: 6:六
wm.workspace.07.name: 7:七
wm.workspace.08.name: 8:八
wm.workspace.09.name: 9:九
wm.workspace.10.name: 10:十

xrdb output:

➜ xrdb -query | grep wm.workspace                
wm.workspace.01.name:   1:
wm.workspace.02.name:   2:
wm.workspace.03.name:   3:
wm.workspace.04.name:   4:
wm.workspace.05.name:   5:\U00004e94
wm.workspace.06.name:   6:\U0000516d
wm.workspace.07.name:   7:\U00004e03
wm.workspace.08.name:   8:\U0000516b
wm.workspace.09.name:   9:\U00004e5d
wm.workspace.10.name:   10:\U00005341

i3-msg getworkspaces output:

➜ i3-msg -t get_workspaces
[{"id":94410634746544,"num":5,"name":"5:\\U00004e94","visible":true,"focused":false,"rect":{"x":0,"y":24,"width":1440,"height":2536},"output":"DP-2","urgent":false},{"id":94410634803536,"num":1,"name":"1:","visible":true,"focused":true,"rect":{"x":1440,"y":597,"width":3440,"height":1413},"output":"DP-4","urgent":false}]

If I comment out the bindsym calls in 30_navigation, manually set $ws5-10 in my config, and then bindsym, I do get the behavior that I expected. This config:

.config/regolith3/i3/config.d/10_basesettings:

set $ws1 "1:"
set $ws2 "2:"
set $ws3 "3:"
set $ws4 "4:"
set $ws5 "5:五"
set $ws6 "6:六"
set $ws7 "7:七"
set $ws8 "8:八"
set $ws9 "9:九"
set $ws10 "10:十"

bindsym $mod+$ws1_key workspace number $ws1
bindsym $mod+$ws2_key workspace number $ws2
bindsym $mod+$ws3_key workspace number $ws3
bindsym $mod+$ws4_key workspace number $ws4
bindsym $mod+$ws5_key workspace number $ws5
bindsym $mod+$ws6_key workspace number $ws6
bindsym $mod+$ws7_key workspace number $ws7
bindsym $mod+$ws8_key workspace number $ws8
bindsym $mod+$ws9_key workspace number $ws9
bindsym $mod+$ws10_key workspace number $ws10

i3-msg getworkspaces output:

➜ i3-msg -t get_workspaces
[{"id":94824691195312,"num":5,"name":"5:五","visible":true,"focused":false,"rect":{"x":0,"y":24,"width":1440,"height":2536},"output":"DP-2","urgent":false},{"id":94824691187888,"num":1,"name":"1:","visible":true,"focused":true,"rect":{"x":1440,"y":594,"width":3440,"height":1416},"output":"DP-4","urgent":false}]

Any pointers as to what's going on here? I'd hate to have to actually uninstall and maintain a copy of the navigation config file so that I can get the correct ordering for me to properly set $wsX to the right value.