The emergence and development of the folk ditty has taken place over a long period of time.
During the period of the Book of Songs, there were narrative chapters that had initially given birth to certain elements of the folk ditty. By the time of the Han Dynasty, the Xianghe song was a form of singing accompanied by silk and bamboo. Unlike some of the clear-sung songs, the Xianghe song can be said to be one of the sources of the minstrelsy.
By the time of the Wei, Jin, and North-South Dynasties, there were some folk songs in the order of time, such as the Song of the Four Hours of the Night and the Song of the Five Nights of the Army. From these songs, we can see several traditional ditties that have been widely circulated in later generations.
By the time of the Sui and Tang dynasties, the development of music had entered a new period of prosperity. More folk songs were selected and refined to become part of rap, song and dance performances, called tunes. This was also an early form of the ditty.
After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the economy of China's towns and cities became increasingly prosperous, and folk art became more abundant, so the minstrelsy entered a more mature stage of comprehensive development.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the trend of compiling albums of folk songs and lyrics had emerged among some of the literati and scholars. On the modern literary form for the minor key laid some foundation.
The distribution of ditties is quite wide, almost all over most of the Han areas in China. Among them, Shandong and Hebei in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and Jiangsu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River are more representative in terms of quantity and variety.