Folk Songs and Short Stories
2 min readThe Southern and Northern Dynasties were known for folk songs.However，long period of confrontation between the Southern and Northern Dynasties led to poor communication in politics，economy and culture，resulting in the distinction of the folk songs between them.
Southern folk songs are mainly lyrical and romantic，exemplified by“Song of Xizhou”，a five-character folk song expressing the deep and pure love of a girl to her beloved.Unlike their southern counterparts，the northern folk songs are primarily militant，heroic，bold and forthright，exemplified by the long epic”The Ballad of Mulan”，which sings of a brave girl named Mulan who disguised herself as a warrior to fulfill her father’s national military duty and won glory on the battlefield.
There is a boom of short stories from the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Short stories in this period are usually very short，written in classical Chinese with brief character description.They mainly fall into two categories:the mythical stories and the stories about people.The former mainly records immortals，witchcrafts，ghosts，spirits and so on.It is closely related to the social conditions of the time，when there is a popularity of various religious superstitions derived from Buddhism and Taoism.Some writers themselves are followers of a religion.The most famous books of mythology are Stories of Immortals，written by Gan Bao（C.286-336），and Supernatural Stories，by a Taoist，Wang Fu（the 3rd century）.The latter category primarily records the anecdotes of common people.Representative works of this kind are New Words About the World by Liu Yiqing（403-c.444），and Joke Forest by Handan Chun（C.132-221）.
What must be pointed out is that short stories in this period are very rough without artistic imagination and detailed description.As far as the authors are concerned，they tend to record what they have heard.Though in their primitive and immature stage，the short stories in this period lay the preliminary foundation for that of later dynasties.
