The Thatched Cottage of Du Fu

The Thatched Cottage of Du Fu was the residence of the great poet of Tang Dynasty when he took refuge in Chengdu.

Du Fu, known also as Du Zi-mei, was born in Gong County, Henan province in 712. When he was twenty, he began to travel widely along the area of the lower reaches of Yangzi River. In 746, he took official examination in Changan, the capital of Tang Dynasty, and failed, since then he lived there for more than ten years. When the An-Si Rebellion broke out in 758, he fled the seized capital and joined the Emperor Shu Zhong's stuff, and was appointed as Shi Yi, a Tang Dynasty official title, hence was called Du Shi Yi as well. As he offended the Emperor later, he was relegated to Hua Zhou. In 759, he resigned office to enter Sichuan, and built the thatched cottage by the Flower Bathing Brook in the west suburban of Chengdu city, and lived there for four years, composing during this period about 240 poems, among which include such ones as the Prime Minister of the Shu Kingdom and the Rhyme to the Thatched Cottage broken by the Autumn wind that came to be known as the masterpieces in the history of Chinese literature. In 765, he took his family out of Sichuan via The Three Gorges on the Yangze River and stayed in Kui Zhou for two years. After then, a boat almost became the shelter of his last days, carrying him wandering around Hunan and Hubei provinces, he died of illness in a boat on the Xiang Jiang River. That year, he was 55.   

Du Fu lived in the transitional period when the Tang Dynasty began to decline from its peak of prosperity and strength. Social upheaval caused by the An-Shi rebellions war threw him into the crowds of homeless people, making him experience different social facts and come to a clear and true realization of the current social situation. He was deeply moved by the people's sufferings and the Dynasty's destiny. He melted all these feelings into his poems which amount to about 1450. His poems have achieved great attainments both in their contents and artistic forms, exercising deep and long influence on the development of Chinese literature, hence has been called History in Verse. Du Fu was one of the most significant figures in the history of Chinese poetry, summarizing the past and opening up the style for the future. He was also the greatest realist poet, and has been famed as the Sage of Poetry.

Du Fu's Thatched Cottage has been a shrine in the history of Chinese literature. It was dilapidated and collapsed after Du Fu left. It came to the period of the Former Shu Kingdom during the Five Dynasties when Wei Zhuang, a famous poet, found the site and rebuilt the cottage. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the cottage was built into a temple and Du Fu's portrait was painted on the wall. In the following dynasties, the cottage was renovated and enlarged tome and time again, the most important two renovations were in 1500 and 1811 which basically settled its present scale and structure. The most lately thorough renovation was renamed as the Du Fu Memorial Hall; In 1961, it was announced by the state council as the key cultural relic protection site, in 1984 it obtained its present name, the Du Fu's Thatched Cottage Museum. 

Du Fu's Thatched Cottage covers an area of 16 hectares. Constructions inside represent Qing Dynasty style, with gardens of the unique compound style in Chinese gardening tradition. The Gate, the Screen Wall, the Lobby, the History in Verse Hall, and the Gong Bu Temple are lined one by one along the middle axis, flanked by corridors and other auxiliary buildings. Among them and in between are trees and bamboo groves, winding brooks and linking small bridges. All these give the place an atmosphere of solemnity and meanwhile a sense of beauty and grace. To the east of the Gong Bu Temple stands the Tablet Pavilion which is the original site of Du fu's Cottage and has been a famous attraction of the city. In February 1997, the government allotted a special fund to rebuild the cottage itself. The newly-built cottage shows typical style of the west Sichuan home residence. The site is to the north of the Tablet Pavilion, covering an area of 1000 square meters with a construction area of 240 square meters. The cottage has 5 main and 4 attached rooms, with the thatched roofs and the old fashioned inside empty wall made of two layers of bamboo strip and spread on the surface with clay. Around the house are bamboo fences and inside the fences are vegetable and herb plots, easily reminding people of the scenes described in Du Fu's poems. While taking a quiet walk in such a historical cultural environment, visitors are apt to be brought back to the ancient times.