Hequ is located in the northwest of Shanxi Province. It borders Pianguan and Wuzhai in the east, Kelan and Baode in the south, and Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia in the west and north across the Yellow River. It is a special area with "one cock crowing in three provinces". Due to its location in the bend of the Yellow River, Hequ has been blocked from traffic in history, with poor land, drought and flood, and the people suffered from severe disasters. This special human and geographical environment has formed the "Going West" way of life and production of local people, who go to Daqingshan and Hetao in Inner Mongolia every year to do short-term and long-term work. From this painful life of separation from wife and children year after year, the "Going West" folk songs that sing the pain of separation, parting, longing and expectation in the world naturally emerged, and the locals called them "Shanqu". Shanqu belongs to the genre of mountain songs. It is still unclear when it was formed, but the "Errentai" formed on the basis of Shanqu has a history of about 200 years. There is a record in the local chronicles that "households in Hequ in the Ming Dynasty have newly compiled string music, and children, women and the elderly all sing and sing", which shows the long history of its singing tradition. The lyrics of Shanqu are profound and the tunes are rich. In the winter of 1953, the National Music Research Institute of the Central Conservatory of Music (now the Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts) went to the local area for the first time to collect folk songs. In just three months, more than 1,500 lyrics and more than 150 tunes were recorded. Among them, "Three Days' Journey, Two Days' Arrival", "Everyone is There, but You Are Not", "Cutting Oats", "Mentioning My Brother and Going West", "The True Soul Follows You", "My Brother is in the East, My Sister is in the West, and the Milky Way Separates Them at Both Ends" are all masterpieces handed down from generation to generation with excellent lyrics and tunes. In terms of the structure of lyrics and tunes, they adopt the upper and lower sentences, with the upper sentence starting with interest and the lower sentence expressing expression. Often, an upper and lower sentence reveals a deep emotional state or depicts a realistic picture of life, such as "The mountains are there, the water is there, the stones are there, everyone is there, but you are not", "I heard my brother singing, and I threw my warm body on the cold window sill" are typical examples. The tunes of Shanqu use two-sentence structures such as juxtaposition, echo, and contrast, which contain rich aesthetic meanings. It also has typical significance in reflecting the development history of folk songs and the living conditions of folk society.