Coveting her beauty and talent, a local tyrant named Mo Huairen wanted to have her as his concubine. She rejected him and the angry Mo plotted to murder her. With the help of her boyfriend and fellow villagers, she managed to escape. The two lovers sang as they traveled and eventually found ultimate freedom by turning themselves into a pair of larks.
The legend of Liu Sanjie was originally an oral tradition and later found itself in romance, drama scripts, and county annals in Guangxi.
The Zhuang people believe that Sister Liu Sanjie actually existed and it is she who spread her ballads among the Zhuang people, giving birth to the festive Folk Song Fair in the spring and autumn. The Zhuang women used to choose their husbands at the Folk Song Fair. The love songs were created and sung by Sister Liu Sanjie. Yizhou city is the Liu Sanjie's hometown and there are many of her ballads sung in the area.
However, as traditions are fading away in the country's shift to modernity, the Ballads of Sister Liu Sanjie are fading as well.
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