Birth of Du Fu

Du Fu was born in 712 CE in Gongyi. A Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, Du Fu is often called the Poet-Sage and, together with his friend Li Bai, counted among the greatest poets in the Chinese language. He failed the imperial examinations and spent much of his life in hardship, and his experience of the An Lushan Rebellion, which devastated the empire, gave rise to poems of unusual compassion and realism about war, famine and the suffering of ordinary people. For that reason his verse has been called a poetic history of his age. He mastered strict forms such as regulated verse, and wrote about 1,400 surviving poems. He was little known in his lifetime, but his reputation rose steadily after his death, and he has influenced Chinese literature ever since.

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