The four great love stories in ancient China are "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", "The Legend of the White Snake" and "Meng Jiangnu Crying on the Great Wall".
Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai: In the story, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai became friends because they studied together in the academy, and the two later fell in love with each other. However, because Zhu Yingtai was of noble birth, he married someone else. After Liang Shanbo learned about it, he was grief-stricken and finally died of excessive longing. After Zhu Yingtai learned about it, he also died with Liang Shanbo, and the two were finally able to turn into a pair of butterflies.
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl: The Cowherd is a poor shepherd boy, and the Weaver Girl is a fairy in the sky. They fell in love and got married, but because the Weaver Girl left the Heavenly Realm to live with the Cowherd on earth, the Emperor of Heaven was angry about it and brought the Weaver Girl back to the Heavenly Realm. Heartbroken, the Cowherd helps him make a pair of magical wings that allow him to fly into the sky to reunite with the Weaver Girl. However, when the Emperor of Heaven found out, he separated them with a river and allowed them to meet only once a year on the seventh day of July, which is the origin of the famous Qixi Festival.
The Legend of the White Snake: The White Lady is a white snake incarnated as a beautiful woman, who falls in love with a human Xu Xian. The two live happily ever after they get married, but White Snake's enemy, Fahai, keeps obstructing them from capturing the goblin White Snake. In the end, Fahai captured Xu Xian. In order to save Xu Xian, the white snake was suppressed by Fahai under the Leifeng Tower. Many years later, White Snake was finally rescued by his son and reunited with Xu Xian.
Meng Jiangnu cried on the Great Wall: A woman named Meng Jiangnu, her husband Fan Xiliang was forcibly arrested by officers and soldiers to build the Great Wall, but she never received news from her husband. In order to find her husband, Meng Jiangnu traveled through thousands of mountains and rivers and finally came to the north end of the Great Wall. When she got there, she found that her husband had long since died, and she was so grief-stricken that she cried loudly, and for a time the mountains shook the Great Wall and collapsed for eight hundred miles, revealing Fan Xiliang's bones. When Qin Shi Huang learned of this, he ordered the arrest of Meng Jiangnu, and finally Meng Meinu jumped into the rough sea with her husband's bones in her arms.