by Tu Fu
Because his bureaucratic routine was unbearably tedious and his position in government a source of danger, Tu soon began to consider leaving official life and devoting himself to writing. In late August, his frustrations compounded by the intensifying rebel threat and a famine which gripped the region, he resigned his post and moved the family to Ch’in-chou, 330 miles to the west.
CH’IN-CHOU/TUNG-KU (759)
The conflict between a deeply felt Confucian responsibility to serve the government and a desire to live the more spiritually rewarding life of a recluse has always been endemic among China’s scholar-officials, and a great many of them chose retirement sooner or later. However, Tu Fu’s decision was remarkable in that, unlike most other men who left official life (T’ao Yüan-ming is the legendary exception among his literary forebears), Tu had no apparent means of support. This momentous decision to free himself from the frustrations and dangers of public life for the solitude which would allow him to concentrate on his writing resulted in great hardship for him and his family, but it also produced spectacular artistic results: not only were over 80% of his surviving poems written after leaving Hua-chou (the last eleven years of his life), but their depth and complexity increased dramatically.
Ch’in-chou was just what Tu had hoped to find—a beautiful area of remote highlands on the western frontier. Although the task of resettling was complicated by continuing asthma and his third relapse of malaria, Tu seemed generally pleased and ready to stay there. However, several Tibetan tribes which had only ostensibly submitted to the T’ang government lived nearby, and they had become menacing. As Tu seems to have sensed, this foreshadowed the Tibetan invasion which was to begin in this province the following year. Feeling threatened, and having found no means of support, the family moved south in search of a more secure life after less than two months in Ch’in-chou.
They next intended to settle at a village in the district of T’ung-ku. Although the area was again quite beautiful, they found only increasing poverty and hunger there, so they left after six weeks. The family then traveled further south, making a difficult crossing over the perilous Ch’in Ling Mountains. This route was so formidable, in fact, that part of the road was actually a wooden structure suspended on the side of a large cliff. After a journey of 500 miles, they reached the city of Ch’eng-tu, in the Szechwan Basin, at the end of the year.
CH’ENG-TU (760–765)
Ch’eng-tu, the capital of Western Chien-nan province (present-day Szechwan), was the largest and most important city in western China. Its size and remoteness attracted many refugees from the ravaged central plain. When Tu Fu arrived, he found a number of well-placed friends and relatives in the area, and their assistance was so generous that he soon built a comfortable home in a small village outside the city. This “thatch hut” became a kind of hallowed memory for later Chinese—there is still a memorial temple (now within Ch’eng-tu City) on the supposed site. Though revered as the humble farmhouse portrayed in Tu’s poems, the house was actually quite comfortable. It was located southwest of Ch’eng-tu, on the north bank of a small river. Tu Fu was charmed by the rusticity and simplicity of this farm village, but he also enjoyed the advantage of neighbors who were from the scholar-official class.
In spite of ill-health (in Ch’eng-tu, severe rheumatism is added to his afflictions), the completion of his house in the spring of 760 marked the beginning of two peaceful and happy years. Finally, he had found his long-desired hermitage, albeit far from his homeland in the capital region. When the first autumn in their new home arrived, the family’s poverty was again serious, largely because the military governor, Tu Fu’s richest patron, had been replaced by a man unknown to Tu. This difficult period passed, however, and the family managed well enough for another year on the generosity of friends and the salaries from various literary commissions.
In the spring of 762, the retired Emperor Hsüan-tsung died, and the health of Emperor Su-tsung was very poor. Soon, a power struggle was raging in the court and, abandoned in the midst of the fighting, the emperor died. The crown prince emerged from the struggle as the new Emperor Tai-tsung. Yen Wu, who had recently been appointed military governor at Ch’eng-tu, was summoned to Ch’ang-an soon afterward. Yen Wu and Tu Fu were old and close friends (they were banished from Ch’ang-an in 758 because they were both members of the group associated with Pang Kuan), so Tu accompanied Yen to Mien-chou, about one hundred miles northeast of Ch’eng-tu, and there bid him farewell.
Within days of this parting, a violent revolt broke out in Ch’eng-tu and spread throughout the province. Tu Fu fled about one hundred miles east to Tzu-chou. As Yen Wu’s close friend, he may have been high on the rebels’ list of enemies; on the other hand, the rebel leader was an admiring friend of his, and he may have wanted to avoid being implicated. In any case, his flight was so precipitous that he was unable to take his family with him. Tu spent several months alone and unsettled in the Tzu-chou region before his family managed to join him there. The revolt was put down in September, but because the local military situation was uncertain and Tibetan armies were threatening the province, Tu seems to have been in no hurry to return to Ch’eng-tu. Indeed, he was not to return for two years.
These years passed uneventfully for Tu and his family—never in great distress, but never settled and content, as they had been in Ch’eng-tu. Tu Fu’s principle concern was resettling his family. He always had plans underway, but circumstances never allowed him to carry through with any of them. Meanwhile, he socialized a good deal, did some sightseeing, and made several extended trips to nearby cities.
Loyal forces defeated the rebels occupying Lo-yang in November, 762, and they too sacked the city. They continued to push eastward until, in February of 763, the long and cataclysmic An Lu-shan rebellion came to an end. The victory was, to a large extent, only nominal however. Although the rebel leader (An Lushan’s son, who had murdered his father) was dead, the victory was secured primarily because many rebel commanders surrendered to the advancing loyal army. As payment for their surrenders, these men were reinstated in the same positions they had held in the rebel government, retaining control over the same territories and armies. This simply confirmed the northeast as an autonomous region.
China had little chance to savor the illusory victory in the east before the Tibetan threat in the west became apparent. The Tibetans had been steadily encroaching into the northwest for several years and were, by now, well-established only seventy-five miles from the capital. Kao Shih, now military governor of Western Chien-nan, attacked them from the south, but was unsuccessful. That autumn he lost several of the province’s northern and western prefectures. And preoccupied with the unflagging court intrigues, the palace failed to respond. In fact, the emperor was apparently kept uninformed of the Tibetan threat until the last minute. In November, he fled and the newly rebuilt capital fell to the Tibetans who plundered it thoroughly. The Chinese army regrouped and recaptured the capital two months later. However, the Tibetans were to occupy northwestern China for another thirteen years. They kept the Chinese in a constant state of fear, and their annual autumn offensives undermined T’ang attempts to recover from the An Lu-shan rebellion.
Soon after returning to the capital, the emperor offered Tu Fu an appointment in Ch’ang-an with an increase in rank. However, as the position was nearly identical to the one he had left in Hua-chou, and the capital was so unstable militarily and politically, he did not accept. In February, 764. Yen Wu was again appointed military governor in Ch’eng-tu, and Tu gladly returned to his thatch hut on the river. The family was to spend another year in the village, but it would not be so idyllic a time as their first two years there.
In June, after considerable persuasion, Yen Wu convinced Tu Fu to accept a position as his military ad visor. The Tibetans still held prefectures in the province, so there was a good deal of military activity, and Tu was kept quite busy. By autumn, the Tibetans had been driven from the province, and Tu, hardly in good healt
h and never able to endure the bureaucratic routine, was allowed to spend most of his time at home.
Kao Shih, who had been recalled to the capital with great honors, died the following February. Then, in May, Yen Wu died. How it was related to Yen Wu’s death is not known, but at about the same time, Tu and his family left Ch’eng-tu. Perhaps he anticipated trouble, for within six months another rebellion broke out in Ch’eng-tu and spread throughout the province.
K’UEI-CHOU (765—768)
The Tu family sailed down the Min River to the Yangtze, then down the Yangtze to Yün-an, arriving there in early autumn. Tu was again very ill, so the family was forced to remain in Yün-an until late the following spring (766). They then made a seventy-mile journey downstream through the first of the Yangtze Gorges to K’uei-chou City. K’uei-chou was located among the spectacular gorges formed where the Yangtze cut its way through the formidable Wu Mountains. It sat on a cliff overlooking the river at the mouth of the Three Gorges (Ch’ü-t’ang Gorge, Wu Gorge, Shih-ling Gorge), a two-hundred-mile stretch of very narrow canyons legendary for the river’s violence and the towering cliffs alive with shrieking gibbons.
Tu Fu was now on the very outskirts of the civilized world. Although traces of Chinese civilization did reach cities along the river, the nearly impenetrable Wu Mountain complex was populated only by aboriginal tribes speaking dialects largely unintelligible to Tu Fu. In spite of, or perhaps more likely, because of this, the two years which Tu spent in the K’uei-chou area were to be his most productive period. Not only were more than one quarter of his surviving poems written there, but they open a new dimension of stark, elemental experience.
Tu stayed briefly in K’uei-chou City. Then, before spring ended, he moved to a rented house on the steep farmland slopes northwest of the city, where he struggled to make ends meet. Although a summer drought frustrated his attempts at farming, he seems to have found some literary employment in the city.
One of Yen Wu’s generals in Ch’eng-tu was transferred to K’uei-chou as prefect and military commander of the region. This man, who had been an acquaintance of Tu Fu’s in Ch’eng-tu, became a generous patron of the displaced and struggling poet. He hired Tu as an unofficial secretary with only token responsibilities and, that autumn, arranged an apartment for him atop West Tower. In this dramatic setting over the southwest corner of the city, his family remaining at the country house and well-provided for, Tu was free enough from distractions and worry that he could concentrate on his writing. He remained in West Tower through winter and into the spring of 767.
In addition to his chronic asthma, Tu seems to have become diabetic and, that winter, he was again suffering from malaria. By late spring, worn down by his illnesses and no longer able to fulfill even his token responsibilities as the prefect’s secretary, Tu was again longing for a quiet life in the countryside. The prefect apparently gave him a substantial parting gift, because Tu soon purchased an estate and a rice farm in the country near K’uei-chou.
The estate, located on a large stream west of K’uei-chou, included a house, guest-house, orchards, and flower gardens. The rice farm was in a small farming village east of the city. It also had a house, and offered a good view of the Yangtze. Tu divided his time between the two houses and managed his diverse farming operations. His health improved markedly. He was comfortably settled as a gentleman farmer and financially secure. But that autumn, his strength restored by this happy state of affairs, Tu was again thinking of returning to Ch’ang-an and his home in nearby Tu-ling, where he still owned a farm. The Tibetans launched another offensive in September, however, so his departure was delayed through the winter.
LAST POEMS (768—770)
In March, 768, having learned that the Tibetans had been beaten back, Tu sailed through the spectacular Three Gorges to Chiang-ling on the central Yangtze plain, a 250-mile journey. Tu Fu’s plan was to sail down the Yangtze to the Han River, then up the Han to Ch’ang-an. However, Tu stopped at Chiang-ling, perhaps because he found a number of close friends living there, and rented a house. Here, the family lived in relative comfort until mid-autumn.
When news of still another Tibetan invasion reached him, Tu seems to have abandoned his plans to return to Ch’ang-an. Instead, the family moved to nearby Kung-an, where they were supported for several months by a wealthy patron. In January of 769, the Tu family again set out down the Yangtze, arriving in Yo-chou at the end of the month. From there, they sailed south, across Tung-t’ing Lake, to the Hsiang River which enters the lake from the south. Tu must have hoped to get assistance from the governor of this province, who was a friend, but the governor died soon after Tu’s arrival. After being delayed for several months by illness, Tu finally settled the family in T’an-chou. Here, a baby girl was born, the family’s poverty intensified, and Tu’s poor health continued. The family remained in T’an-chou until the following spring.
In early May, 770, a revolt broke out in T’an-chou. The provincial governor was murdered and the city seized. Once again, the Tu family was forced to flee. They planned to take a boat to Ch’en-chou, 460 miles south on the Hsiang River, where they could expect assistance from Tu’s uncle, the local prefect. But by mid-summer, when the revolt was put down, they were still far short of their destination. When the good news reached them, they quickly returned to T’an-chou.
By autumn, Tu had again settled on returning to his home at Ch’ang-an. The Tibetans launched another invasion in early October. His baby girl fell ill and died before autumn had ended. And that winter, on a boat traveling north along the eastern shore of Tung-t’ing Lake, Tu Fu himself died.
NOTES
Page references are given in the running heads; numbers on the left margin refer to line numbers. In cases where a poem has several sections, line numbers are preceded by section numbers (e.g., 4.3). T stands for Title.
With the exception of passages from Burton Watson’s The Complete Work of Chuang Tzu, all translations are my own.
EPIGRAPH
My epigraph is borrowed from a Tu Fu poem which I have not translated: “Written in Admiration After Hearing Hsü Shih-yi Chant His Poems One Night.”
EARLY POEMS
GAZING AT THE SACRED PEAK
T Sacred Peak: Tu Fu has hiked part-way up T’ai Mountain. As the most revered of China’s five sacred mountains, its summit was the destination of many pilgrims.
3 Creation: literally “create change” (tsao-hua). an ongoing process: a kind of deified principle.
4 Yin and yang: These philosophic terms also refer to northern and southern mountain slopes—the northern always being in shadow and the southern in light.
VISITING FENG-HSIEN TEMPLE AT LUNG-MEN
T Lung-men: a spectacular complex of cave temples located six miles south of Lo-yang. Not actually a cave temple, Feng-hsien was a wooden structure built against the cliff. The colossal sculptures carved from the cliff for its shrine (including a thirty-five-foot Buddha) are one of the glories of Chinese Buddhist sculpture.
WRITTEN ON THE WALL AT CHANG’S HERMITAGE
7 On a whim: The recluse Wang Hui-chih (d. 388) set out “on a whim” to visit a friend. When he arrived at the friend’s house, however, the mood had vanished, so he simply returned home without seeing his friend.
FOR LI PO
3 Ko Hung: Taoist alchemist and writer (283–343) famous for discovering how to produce the elixir of immortality. There were two schools of Taoism: esoteric (concerned primarily with the pursuit of longevity) and philosophic (following Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu). Tu Fu considered the esoteric school humorous, at best, but he took the philosophic school quite seriously.
CH’ANG-AN I
A LETTER FROM MY BROTHER AT LIN-YI ARRIVES
1 Dual Principles: Heaven and Earth, yang and yin (p. 133).
10 Mu Wang: legendary emperor (d. 946 B.C.) who used these mythical turtles and crocodiles to form a bridge.
11 Magpies… Celestial River: Once each year, magpies form a bridge over the Cele
stial River (Milky Way)—see p. 155.
21 Flood-charm: sculpted peach pits thrown into rising waters as a charm against flooding.
22 Peach branches of immortality: There was a vast peach tree on P’eng-lai, island of the (Taoist) immortals in the Eastern Sea. Anyone who tasted its fruit became immortal.
24 P’eng-lai tortoise: One myth holds that this vast sea tortoise supports P’eng-lai on its shell. In another myth, it supports the entire earth.
SONG OF THE WAR-CARTS
T This poem is in the yüeh-fu ballad form, the traditional form for poems of social protest, which allows rather extreme metrical irregularities. There was no compulsory military service. However, press-gangs were used in times of heavy fighting, when there weren’t enough volunteers to fill the military’s needs.
14 Emperor Wu: Han emperor (156–87 B.C.). Placing ballads in the Han Dynasty was a yüeh-fu convention, used when the poem was likely to offend those in power.
