The Spring and Autumn Period is an extremely important turning stage in the history of ancient Chinese urban development
and even the history of
social development when the rites and music deteriorated. Development of cities promoted economic prosperity and thus gave rise to rich and pluralistic urban culture. Against the social reality of deteriorating rites, the style of some of the chapters in the Book of Songs also exhibited marked changes from the elegant and refined odes and eulogies to plainspoken and outright political allegorical poems of
changed styles. Urban prosperity promoted the development of poems of changed styles and impressions of urban life inevitably emerged in the poems. The Book of Songs was closed related to the urban life of the Spring and Autumn Period of the West Zhou Dynasty, which differs from the traditional notion that they are folk songs recording the actual rural life of the ancestors. This article proves that the Book of Songs records the highly developed urban civilization from the records of excavations of cities and the documentation of the pre-Qin times, thus concluding that the author of the Book of Songs did not come from the lower social strata and the Book of Songs was not one of folk songs.