As love fills the air on this Valentine's Day, many of us will be preoccupied not only with dating, giving gifts, confessing a crush, or even proposing marriage, but also with the nature of love itself. As you ponder the secrets of the heart today, consider the words of some of China's contemporary romantic writers, from different generations and perspectives.

Born in the 1960s: Zhang Xiaoxian

Regarded as the matriarch of love by several generations of Chinese, the Hong Kong female writer Zhang Xiaoxian, whose series of novels The Bread Tree is being adapted for the TV screen, has never been married. As she said in an interview with Chinese aggregator website gmw.cn, "There will be love as long as there are men and women. But if you are happy just being together, why get married? Being with your soulmate is more important for me."

In this writer's mind, love is simple: "You can't say you know or don't know love, and you needn't try to decode it. You may fall in love more than once in your lifetime, and every time it happens, you should think, 'Well, love turns out to be like this.'"

Born in the 1970s: Zhao Zhao

When Zhao Zhao's You Can Touch Anything but Love was adapted as a teleplay, it was warmly welcomed by Chinese audiences. This successful writer and screenwriter joked that "I'm no longer young, so I have lots of experience and a rather realistic and utilitarian idea of love. At the same time, I'm still far from being a sage, so I am still working on my definition of love." She used a simile to explain her current perspective: "Love is like a two-bedroom apartment. The two people in the relationship need separate bedrooms while they need to meet in the living room."

For those who regard love as the most important part of a marriage, she advised, "Getting married is a huge event. However, we are not just getting married to a person, but also to a life."