Official ambitions and wartime displacement
Du Fu read widely and traveled, associating with poets including Li Bai and Gao Shi. He failed the jinshi examination and later spent years seeking employment at Chang'an. Literary presentations to the court eventually brought a minor appointment. Historical biographies connect these ambitions with the difficulties experienced by his family.
During the An Lushan rebellion he was caught in territory controlled by the insurgents. He later reached the imperial court at Fengxiang and became a remonstrance official. His defense of Fang Guan brought scrutiny. After service at Huazhou he left office and traveled through Qinzhou and Tonggu toward Sichuan, under pressures of warfare, court politics and livelihood.
The Chengdu cottage and later journeys
Du Fu brought his family to Chengdu in the winter of 759 and established a cottage near Huanhua Stream the following spring. The Chengdu Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum records several periods there totaling three years and nine months, with more than 240 surviving poems associated with that residence. Support from friends and officials supplied a home, though insecurity remained a subject of his writing.
He served on Yan Wu's staff and received a titular appointment in the Ministry of Works, the source of the name Du Gongbu. Later journeys took him from Chengdu through Kuizhou to the Jing-Xiang region. He died in 770. The Chengdu memorial site underwent repeated rebuilding after his lifetime; its surviving structures embody later commemoration rather than an intact Tang residence.
Personal experience and the circumstances of an age
Spring View moves from a war-stricken capital to separation, longing for family letters and the physical gesture of scratching thinning hair. Mountains, flowers and birds appear within the experience of conflict. In Climbing High, autumn river scenery, falling leaves and animal cries lead toward prolonged travel, illness and aging within the regulated form of the poem.
The New History of the Tang praised Du Fu's treatment of contemporary affairs together with his command of poetic language and form, recalling the description of his poetry as history in verse. That description draws attention to social experience. Poems also select and organize their material through a particular voice, and historical investigation can compare them with chronicles and other records.