"Circle Dance", Tibetan Flowerpickign Festival in Baima, Wnxian County from Gansu Vulume

Love ballads, reflecting love and marriage, are embodiment of the varying emotions and thoughts of men and women in love.

From the literary point of view, the artistic value of love songs ranks top among ballads and there are many love ballad classics which strike us. The reason why these ballads are moving and popular is that they are full of passion and are a call for the deepest love. The good love ballads have similar characteristics: they are moving, passionate and witty with vivid metaphors.

Of course, love ballads usually express the love between men and women at different stages: first meeting, admiring, feeling out, falling in love, passionate love, engagement, wedding, marital change, rejecting marriage, seeing off lover and so forth. The styles vary by region and personality: some of which are gentle, honest, and implicit; some are explicit and straightforward; some are bold and witty.

Though ballad singers are often not very learned, and some are even illiterate, they are good at different rhetorical devices such as description, personification, figures of speech, partial tone, pun, etc. They express their love delicately by means of natural phenomena such as the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, grass, trees, birds, animals, etc., which is ingenious and amazing.

Many Chinese ethnic minorities have a tradition of courting through singing. For example, on the Hua'er Party (a song party on the 6th day of the 6th lunar month in northwest China, where young men and women of local minorities meet and court each other by singing Hua'er songs. Hua'er or "Flower" in the songs is the pet name for young woman; while Shaonian or "young man" is for the young man. These addresses for lovers later become the song titles.

At the song fair of the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month of Zhuang ethnic group in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, there are usually thousands of people meeting and singing love songs, among whom the legendary Sister Liu is the best one. There are many other festivals in China, such as Xinggezuoyue (a song party) of the Dong ethnic group; Ganchang (going to a fair) of the Miao ethnic group, Zuogetang (a song party) of the Yao ethnic group; Shonton Festival and Flower-Picking Festival of the Tibetan ethnic group; and the Axitiaoyue of the Yi ethnic group, Sanyuejie (a song party) of the Bai ethnic group, and Water-splashing Festival of the Dai ethnic group. Though belonging to different customs, these songs all convey the messages of love, attachment and engagement, and have all contributed to the abundant and colorful love ballads of China in general.