Du Fu

Du Fu was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, later ranked among the foremost figures in the classical Chinese canon. Born near Luoyang into a family of scholar-officials, he studied for the civil examinations and travelled widely in his youth. He sought office at the capital, Chang'an, but held only minor posts. The An Lushan Rebellion (755) uprooted his life; he moved through wartime China and settled for years in Chengdu, where he built a thatched cottage, before drifting down the Yangtze. His roughly 1,500 surviving poems record personal hardship and social upheaval in dense, formally exacting verse. He died in 770 while travelling by river in Hunan.