Folk songs are one of the basic genres of Chinese folk songs. It is spread widely and has rich reserves. One view is that any folk song with free rhythm and long melody that spreads in plateau, mountainous and hilly areas and is sung by people for masturbation and entertainment during various individual tasks such as traveling, cutting firewood, grazing, mowing grass or at folk songs. It is what is usually called a folk song. Another view is that in terms of genre characteristics, the pastoral songs, hymns, and feast songs sung by herdsmen on the grasslands, the fishing songs and boat songs sung by fishermen in rivers, lakes, and seas, and the "crying wedding songs" sung at wedding ceremonies in some places in the south are also They all belong to folk songs. Because they also have the basic characteristics of singing during individual labor, freely extending their singing tunes, and self-entertainment and masturbation. Generally speaking, this broad concept of folk songs is more helpful for our understanding of the artistic characteristics of the folk song genre.
Chinese folk songs are mainly spread in Inner Mongolia Plateau, Northwest Loess Plateau, Qinghai Plateau, Xinjiang Plateau, Southwest Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, Qinling Daba Mountains, Dabie Mountains, Wuyi Mountains, and Tibet Plateau. Among them, the most representative transmission areas and varieties include: various "long-tune" songs from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, "Xintianyou", "Mountain Song" and "Mountain Tune" from Shanxi, Shaanxi and western Inner Mongolia, Han Dynasty songs from Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai areas. "Hua'er" of the Hui, Hui and other ethnic groups, "pastoral songs" of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang, "Sister's Song", "Maoshan Song" and "Carrying Second Brother" in southern Shaanxi and northern Sichuan, "Slowly Driving the Cow" in the Dabie Mountains, "Slowly Driving the Cow" in Jiangsu and Zhejiang "Wu Folk Song", "Hakka Folk Song" in the intersection area of ??Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong, "Morning Song" (also known as "Shen Song") in the junction area of ??Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, Dading Folk Song, Midu Folk Song and folk songs of various ethnic groups, "Tibetan folk songs" from various Tibetan inhabited areas and folk songs of various ethnic groups in Guangxi, etc.