Du Fu's Thatched Cottage
Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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Du Fu or Tu Fu (712–770) was a prominent Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. Du Fu's thatched cottage, Du Fu Caotang, is located in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, was the former residence of the poet's retreat in Tang dynasty. In the winter of 759, Du Fu moved to Sichuan to take refuge. There he built a thatched hut along the bank of the Huanhua Stream. He stayed there for 3 years and 9 months where he composed more than 240 poems. Many of the poems written had the cottage as the subject.
Replica of Du Fu's Thatched Cottage in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
The original cottage has disappeared long ago. The area around it was renovated in the Ming and Qing dynasties and enlarged to its present scale in an expansive park, including a bamboo garden, several pavilions, and a number of bridges. The total area of the grounds is about 200,000 square meters. The cottage is in the style of Han period. Within the courtyard are plum trees and bamboo groves. There are also streams and bridges with many scenic spots.
Du Fu's Biography
Along with Li Bai (@ Li Po, reference to Li Bai Memorial Hall), he is frequently regarded as the greatest of Chinese poets. Du Fu's own ambition was to help his country by becoming a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life parallels that of China at that time, which was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755. The final 15 years of his life was a time of almost constant unrest - for the country and for himself.
Initially unpopular, Du Fu's works have become hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese culture. Traditionally, Chinese literary criticism places great emphasis on knowledge of the life of the author when interpreting a work. This is especially important in the case of Du Fu, as his poems reflects prominently on the morality and history of his period. As Chinese poems are typically extremely concise, not knowing the circumstantial factors surrounding it may force us to imagine it incorrectly, and the result will be that we either misunderstand the poem or fail to understand it altogether".
Path at Du Fu Cottage.
Most of what we know about Du Fu comes from his own poems. Like many other Chinese poets, he came from a noble family (they claimed descent from the emperor Yao) which had fallen into relative poverty (although scholars estimated that his family income was still eleven times that of an averagely comfortable family). He was born in 712: the birthplace is not known, except that it was near Luoyang, Henan province (a likely candidate is Gong county). In later life he considered himself to belong to the capital city of Chang'an.
Du Fu's China
Du Fu's mother died shortly after he was born, and he was partially raised by his aunt. He had an elder brother, who died young. He also had three half brothers and one half sister, to whom he frequently refers in his poems, although he never mentions his stepmother.
As the son of a minor scholar-official, his youth was spent on the standard education of a future civil servant: study and commit to memory Confucian classics of philosophy, history and poetry. He later claimed to have produced creditable poems by his early teens, but these examples have been lost.
Pavilion over lake.
In the early 730s he travelled in the Jiangsu/Zhejiang area; his earliest surviving poem, describing a poetry contest, is thought to date from the end of this period, around 735. In that year he travelled to Chang'an to take the civil service examination. To his own surprise and that of later critics, he failed the exam. Scholars speculated that Du Fu probably failed because his writing style at that stage of his life was too dense and obscure, while other scholars blamed it to his failure to cultivate connections in the capital. After this failure he went back to travelling, this time around Shandong and Hebei.
His father died around 740. Du Fu would have been allowed to enter the civil service because of his father's rank, but he is thought to have given up the privilege in favour of one of his half brothers. He spent the next four years living in the Luoyang area, fulfilling his duties in domestic affairs.
In the autumn of 744 he met Li Bai for the first time, and the two poets formed a somewhat one-sided friendship: Du Fu was by some years the younger, still up and coming, while Li Po was already a poetic star. In existence today are twelve poems written by Du Fu dedicated to or about Li Bai, whereas only one in the other direction. They met again only once, in 745.
In 746 he moved to the capital in an attempt to resurrect his official career. He participated in a second exam the following year, but all the candidates were failed by the prime minister (apparently in order to prevent the emergence of possible rivals). Thereafter he never again attempted the examinations, instead petitioning the emperor directly in 751, 754 and probably again in 755. He married around 752, and by 757 had five children — three sons and two daughters. One of his sons died in infancy in 755. From 754 he developed began lung problems (probably asthma), the first of a series of ailments which would dog him for the rest of his life.
Sitting area under the bamboo grove, at Du Fu Cottage complex.
In 755 he finally received an appointment as Registrar of the Right Commandant's office of the Crown Prince's Palace. Although this was a minor post, in normal times it would have been at least the start of an official career. But unfortunately for Du Fu, before he could even start work, the position was swept away by current events.
War
The An Lushan Rebellion began in December 755, and was not completely crushed for almost eight years. It caused enormous disruption to Chinese society: the census of 754 recorded 52.9 million people, but that of 764 just 16.9 million, the remainder having been killed or displaced. During this time, Du Fu led a largely itinerant life, being kept unsettled by wars, associated famines and imperial displeasure. This period of unhappiness, however, contributed to the making of Du Fu as a poet: All the sufferings around him, the lives of his family, neighbors, and even strangers became the enduring themes of his poetry.
In 756 Emperor Xuanzong was forced to flee the capital and abdicate. Du Fu, who had been away from the city, took his family to a place of safety and attempted to join up with the court of the new emperor (Suzong), but he was captured by the rebels and taken to Chang'an. In the autumn, his youngest son Du Zongwu (Baby Bear) was born. Around this time Du Fu is thought to have contracted malaria.
Scene framed by archway.
He escaped from Chang'an the following year, and was appointed Reminder when he rejoined the court in May 757. This post gave access to the emperor, but was largely ceremonial. Du Fu's conscientiousness compelled him to try to make use of it: he soon caused trouble for himself by protesting against the removal of his friend and patron Fang Guan on a petty charge; he was then himself arrested, but was pardoned. He was granted leave to visit his family in September, but he soon rejoined the court and on December 8, 757, he returned to Chang'an with the emperor following its recapture by government forces. However, his advice continued to be unappreciated, and in the summer of 758 he was demoted to a post as Commissioner of Education in Huazhou. He did not like that position, as he described it in one poem:
"I am about to scream madly in the office/Especially when they bring more papers to pile higher on my desk."
He moved on again in the summer of 759. This has traditionally been ascribed to famine, but some believe it's more likely due to frustration. He next spent around six weeks in Qinzhou (now Tianshui, Gansu province), where he wrote over sixty poems.
Chengdu
In 760 (or winter of 759) he arrived in Chengdu (Sichuan province), where he based himself for most of the next five years. By the autumn of that year he was in financial trouble, and sent poems begging help to various acquaintances. He was relieved by Yen Wu, a friend and former colleague who was appointed governor general at Chengdu. Despite his financial problems, this was one of the happiest and most peaceful periods of his life, and many of his poems from this period are peaceful depictions of his life in his famous "thatched cottage". In 762 he left the city to escape a rebellion, but he returned in the summer of 764 and was appointed military advisor to Yen Wu, who was involved in campaigns against the Tibetans.
Last years
Luoyang, the region of his birthplace, was recovered by government forces in the winter of 762, and in the spring of 765 Du Fu and his family sailed down the Yangtze, apparently with the intention of making their way back there. They travelled slowly, held up by his ill-health (by this time he was suffering from poor eyesight, deafness and general old age in addition to his previous ailments). They stayed in Kuizhou (now Baidi, Chongqing) at the entrance to the Three Gorges for almost two years from late spring 766. This period was Du Fu's last great poetic flowering, and here he wrote 400 poems in his dense, late style. In autumn 766 Bo Maolin became governor of the region: he supported Du Fu financially and employed him as his unofficial secretary.
In March 768 he began his journey again and got as far as Hunan province, where he died in Tanzhou (now Changsha) in November or December 770, in his 59th year. He was survived by his wife and two sons, who remained in the area for some years at least. His last known descendant is a grandson who requested a grave inscription for the poet from Yuan Zhen in 813.
I visited the place where Du Fu's thatched cottage once stood in October 2005, with a group of participants from AsiaExplorers. In its place in a replica, and the grounds have now been turned into a park, with streams and pavilions.
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