Du Fu Thatched Cottage 杜甫草堂

At the end of the Flower Path, you come face to face with the Shadow Wall. A shadow wall — or spirit screen — is a freestanding short wall in traditional Chinese architecture, typically positioned just inside or outside a main gate to deflect direct sightlines and serve as decoration. But this particular wall is quite unusual: it is composed entirely of blue-and-white porcelain fragments set into the plaster.

Step closer and look. The two characters Cao Tang — "Thatched Cottage" — are not painted on the surface and not carved into stone. They were assembled, piece by tiny piece, from blue ceramic shards pressed into the wall — a white ground with blue glaze, the same palette as the most classic Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. In sunlight or lamplight the pieces catch the light at slightly different angles, giving the whole wall a quiet, living shimmer — as though the porcelain itself has come alive.

When was this wall made? In the late Qing dynasty. A craftsman from Jingdezhen — the porcelain capital of China — assembled these characters from discarded kiln fragments: pieces that had been misfired or cracked and could not be sold. He transported them from Jiangxi Province all the way to Chengdu and pressed them into place here at the end of the Flower Path. Why go to such lengths, bringing porcelain from so far away? Because blue-and-white porcelain is the most recognizable symbol of Chinese ceramic culture, and using the most precious, most distinctly Chinese material to display the name of the most plain and honest place in Chengdu — that contrast is itself a kind of poetry.

The wall and the path form a perfect pair. The experience of walking the Flower Path is one of gradual compression: tall red walls close in on both sides, the bamboo above presses the sky smaller, the world narrows — and then, suddenly, the wall opens the space before you, standing there in blue and white. This spatial rhythm is a deliberate technique of classical Chinese garden design: yu yang xian yi — first suppress, then release. Confine the visitor, hold them in, and then let go; the release, when it comes, hits twice as hard.

Photography note: Avoid shooting at midday under direct sunlight — the porcelain shards will overexpose and you'll lose all the texture. The best light is overcast, when the diffused glow brings out a particularly warm depth in the blue. Alternatively, try shooting at dusk — the wall faces the Flower Path, and a landscape lamp in front of it will illuminate it in warm yellow tones that play beautifully against the cool blue of the glaze. The cottage does not have regular evening hours, but if there is a night event, this scene is exceptional.

Just beyond the shadow wall is the final stop on our tour — the Hall of Great Elegance.

We've arrived at the Twig Gate. It's small and low — almost unremarkable beside the grand scale of the halls we've just come through. But within the layout of the cottage, the Twig Gate marks a crucial threshold: passing through it, we leave the "memorial zone" and enter the "residential zone" — the place where Du Fu actually lived.

Why "Twig Gate"? The name comes from Du Fu's own poetry. In his poem "A Guest Arrives", he wrote: "The flower path has never been swept for any guest; today, for you, my brushwood door opens for the first time." That penmen — a door woven from reeds or brushwood — is this gate. When Du Fu lived here, the door was probably not even wooden planks; more likely it was a simple frame of bamboo or branches. The version you see today is a later reconstruction, but it deliberately keeps that quality of plainness — nothing like the ornate buildings behind us, just a faithful echo of the "poor poet's" reality.

The characters Chai Men above the lintel are written in a sturdy, unaffected hand. Stand here for a moment and picture it: twelve hundred years ago, Du Fu passed through this gate every day — out to fetch water from the Huanhua Stream, back to sit under the eaves and watch the bamboo shoots pushing up through the soil. He wrote: "Countless spring shoots fill the grove; the twig gate, shut tight, blocks all human traffic." In spring the bamboo forest was so thick with new growth that closing the gate felt like sealing the world outside. Lines this tranquil, this domestic, are rare in Du Fu's poetry — which is why these years at the cottage may have been the closest thing to home he ever had.

Once you've stepped through and turned back to look, notice something in the sequence of spaces we've just walked: from the main gate to the Grand Hall to the Poetry History Hall to the Twig Gate, each structure has been a step lower in scale, a step quieter in tone. The main gate offered formal grandeur; the Grand Hall had the dignity of an official building; the Poetry History Hall felt like a commemorative temple. Then suddenly: this small, plain, low gate. The design is deliberate. It says: you are no longer visiting a monument to the poet. You are entering the poet's home. Du Fu was not a god. He was a person — a person who lived in a thatched hut and worried about food and firewood. Step through the Twig Gate, and you step into his life.

Ahead of us now is the building that honors Du Fu's spirit — the Ministry of Works Shrine.

We've now arrived at the first major structure along the cottage's central axis — the Grand Hall. What is a xie? It's the term for an official's place of work in ancient China. Du Fu's highest office was "Acting Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Works", and so later generations built this Grand Hall to honor the fact that he had once held official rank — an expression of their deep reverence for the poet.

Take a look at the center of the hall — that is the bronze statue of Du Fu. It was created in the 1960s by Liu Kaiqu, one of China's most celebrated sculptors. Look closely: Du Fu is seated on a rock, his body tilted slightly forward, one hand resting limply on his knee, the other bracing against the stone. His head is bowed, his brow furrowed — the posture of a man who has just arrived after a long and exhausting journey. The bronze at his knees has been worn to a bright shine by countless visitors, because folk tradition holds that rubbing the Sage's knees will bring a flow of literary inspiration. A charming notion — and plenty of students and parents make sure to give it a try.

What sets this statue apart from other poet monuments is precisely this: it does not portray Du Fu as tall, commanding, or triumphant. It captures him at his most real, his most vulnerable. Because what is most moving about Du Fu is not how much he achieved, but that in the depths of poverty and hardship he never stopped caring about his country and its people. A man who couldn't feed himself, yet spent every day thinking about "the cold and hungry scholars of the world" — that quality of character carries more force than any grand heroic narrative.

The walls on either side of the hall are hung with plaques and couplets inscribed by famous figures across the centuries. The most celebrated of these is a couplet by the Qing scholar Gu Fuchu: "Across the ages we were not contemporaries — yet ask of these rivers and mountains: how many poets could truly match them? You too were a wanderer here, sir — yet you left behind a thatched cottage that endures with heaven and earth, for all who come in moonlit, wind-swept nights to remember you." In just two lines, it captures the great paradox of Du Fu's life: he was a drifter with no permanent home, yet what he left behind is as permanent as the sky above us.

The hall itself is also worth admiring. Look up at the wooden beams and eaves. Every major structure at the cottage uses the traditional Sichuan chuandou timber-frame construction — joints fitted together with mortise and tenon, not a single nail. This technique has been practiced in Sichuan for thousands of years and performs remarkably well in earthquakes. Ancient timber buildings of this style are found throughout western Sichuan, but the cottage's examples are exceptionally well preserved — an architectural heritage in their own right.

That's our look at the Grand Hall. Continue along the central axis and we'll reach the most important building in the entire complex — the Poetry History Hall.

We've arrived at the final chapter of the cottage — the Hall of Great Elegance. This magnificent hall was originally the main Buddhist worship hall of the Caotang Temple. In 2002 it was renovated by the museum and opened to the public, becoming the culminating experience of the entire visit. The plaque above the entrance reads Da Ya Tang in characters assembled from the calligraphy of Yan Zhenqing, the great Tang dynasty master — his script broad, powerful, and upright. Du Fu's poetry is described as chen yu dun cuo: deep, somber, and rhythmically forceful. The two men's temperaments are a natural match.

Why "Hall of Great Elegance"? The term Da Ya — "Great Elegance" or "Great Odes" — comes from the Book of Songs, China's oldest collection of poetry, in which the Da Ya and Xiao Ya ("Minor Odes") were distinct sections reserved for court verse on matters of national importance. Huang Tingjian — Du Fu's most devoted Northern Song disciple, whom we encountered at the Ministry of Works Shrine — once argued that Du Fu's poetry is spiritually continuous with the Da Ya of the Book of Songs. Naming this final hall after that tradition is a statement: Du Fu is not simply a "poet" in the ordinary sense. He is a cultural foundation of a civilization, standing beside the Book of Songs at the very source of the Chinese literary tradition.

Inside the hall, two works of monumental art command the space. The first is a large lacquer mural with inlaid colored glaze covering the entire back wall — at roughly 18 meters wide, it is the largest indoor lacquer painting in China. It was created using techniques of large lacquer, gold and silver foil, shell, and colored stone mosaic. The narrative moves from left to right across Du Fu's life: on the right, the young poet's years of bold adventure — climbing Mount Tai, touring the Wu and Yue regions, his famous first meeting with Li Bai; on the left, the years of flight following the An-Shi Rebellion — family in tow, sick and impoverished, dying alone on a small boat on the Xiang River. At the center of the composition: Du Fu writing at the cottage, a white-robed old man seated in a bamboo chair before the thatched hut, brush in hand, a wall of green bamboo rising behind him. Walk the length of this painting from one end to the other and you have walked through the whole of Du Fu's life.

The second work is a set of twelve sculptures depicting major poets of Chinese literary history, displayed on a platform at the center of the hall. The gathering includes Qu Yuan, Tao Yuanming, Chen Zi'ang, Wang Wei, Li Bai, Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Lu You, Xin Qiji — and at the center, Du Fu. Together these twelve trace the essential lineage of classical Chinese poetry. Qu Yuan stands for poetry's origins and its devotion to country; Tao Yuanming for the pastoral spirit; Li Bai for the soaring brilliance of pure genius; Du Fu for the weight of reality and a humane conscience. No one stands higher than any other. Together they form the great tradition.

Look at the platform in front of Du Fu's stone figure — whenever you visit, you will find fresh flowers there. Some placed by the cottage staff, more placed by visitors of their own accord. Du Fu wrote in life: "Leftover cups and cold dishes — everywhere, hidden grief and bitterness." He was never well treated by his own time. Yet in every generation since, flowers have not stopped coming. A man his era never looked after has been deeply loved by every era that followed. That is Du Fu.

We've reached the fifth major structure on the central axis — the Ministry of Works Shrine. This is the most solemn and significant building in the entire complex. Why is it called the Ministry of Works Shrine? When Du Fu was in Chengdu, his friend Yan Wu, the military governor of Jiannan, recommended him for the position of "Acting Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Works" — a junior sixth-rank advisory post responsible for matters of construction and engineering. Modest in rank as it was, it was the highest office Du Fu ever held. Posterity came to call him "Du of the Ministry of Works", and the shrine built in his memory took that name.

In front of the shrine hangs a couplet with a story that has been told in Chengdu for centuries — written by the Qing scholar He Shaoji: "The spring breezes along the Brocade River are yours to command, sir; on the seventh day of the new year, I return to the thatched cottage." Behind these lines lies a folk tradition that has endured for hundreds of years: Renjri, the seventh day of the first lunar month. Legend holds that this is the day the goddess Nüwa created humanity. He Shaoji, when serving as an education commissioner in Sichuan, made a personal habit of visiting the cottage every year on the seventh of the first month to pay his respects to Du Fu — feeling, perhaps, that a life as painful as Du Fu's deserved the company of someone on this particular human day. Over time, what began as one man's private ritual became a citywide custom: every seventh day of the first month, the people of Chengdu come to the cottage in families — old and young together — to enjoy the early spring plum blossoms and recite Du Fu's poetry. The tradition continues to this day and has been recognized as an intangible cultural heritage of Sichuan Province. Du Fu may be the only poet in the world whose name has become a city's annual festival.

Please step inside the shrine. The central altar holds Du Fu's spirit tablet, and flanking it — look carefully on either side — are tablets for two other poets: Lu You of the Southern Song dynasty, and Huang Tingjian of the Northern Song. Why do they share Du Fu's altar? Because both men were among his most devoted admirers and heirs. Huang Tingjian founded the Jiangxi School of Poetry and spent his entire life studying Du Fu, whom the school revered as its single founding ancestor. Lu You was the greatest patriotic poet of the Southern Song — his deathbed verse "When the imperial armies reclaim the Central Plains, do not forget to tell your father at the ancestral rites" carries exactly the same spirit as Du Fu's "The kingdom has fallen; the mountains and rivers remain." The three of them — Tang dynasty Du Fu, Northern Song Huang Tingjian, Southern Song Lu You — strung together, trace the deepest and most enduring thread running through Chinese poetry: living in a small room, yet holding the whole world in one's heart.

The shrine also houses two stone portrait engravings of Du Fu — one from the Ming dynasty, one from the Qing, and the two could hardly be more different. The Ming version, carved in the thirtieth year of the Wanli reign, shows Du Fu as a full-faced, dignified figure with the ease of a man well provided for — in reality Du Fu was poor his entire life and never well-fed; this is idealization born of reverence. The Qing version gives us a gaunt face, sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes, a furrowed brow — unmistakably a man worn down by hardship. Two carvings, two interpretations: one honors the grandeur of the "Sage of Poetry," the other captures the truth of the "wandering old man."

The shrine also contains two Qing dynasty stone engravings showing the cottage's full layout — one from the fifty-eighth year of the Qianlong reign, one from the sixteenth year of the Jiaqing reign. See what the cottage looked like two hundred years ago: a few thatched rooms among bamboo groves, a stream winding around the grounds, narrow paths crossing the fields — nearly identical to what Du Fu describes in his poems. Every generation that has maintained and restored this site has worked to preserve the appearance of Du Fu's own time, rather than remodel it to suit their own taste. That fidelity to the past is part of what makes this place worth preserving.

That's our visit to the Ministry of Works Shrine. Now follow me — a few steps to the left — to see the cottage's most iconic landmark: the Shaoling Thatched Cottage Stele Pavilion.

You're now standing in what is probably the most photographed spot in the entire cottage — Flower Path. A lane of blue stone slabs, flanked by tall red walls capped with dark gray tiles, with dense bamboo leaning over the wall tops from outside. Red walls, green bamboo, gray tiles, stone paving — four colors in a composition that has become one of Chengdu's most recognizable images.

The name "Flower Path" comes from the warmest lines in Du Fu's poem "A Guest Arrives": "The flower path has never been swept for any guest; today, for you, my brushwood door opens for the first time." The flower path is the lane leading to the thatched cottage, always scattered with fallen petals because — simply — no guests ever came. But today the brushwood door opens, just for you. The poem describes a moment when a close friend appears at Du Fu's door without warning, in an age without telephones or messaging, when a friend's visit arrived on the strength of a letter sent weeks ago or sheer luck. The joy leaping out of those two lines is barely contained.

The classic angle here is shooting from north to south: stand at the entrance to the path, crouch slightly to let the perspective lines of the two walls converge toward the far end, position your subject off-center left or right, and leave sky at the top — the shot practically composes itself into a magazine cover. The best light comes in the early morning around eight or nine, or in the late afternoon around four or five, when the sun hits the wall at a low angle and brings out the texture of the old plaster, while bamboo shadows fall across it in shifting patterns. If you want the path to yourself, come within the first half hour after opening or the last half hour before closing — most visitors concentrate on the buildings along the central axis, and the path stays relatively quiet at those times.

Alongside the path runs a stretch of bamboo grove and a section of the Huanhua Stream. Bamboo is the image Du Fu returned to most often when writing about the cottage — "Green bamboo half-sheathed in their cases; new shoots just clearing the wall." The Huanhua Stream appears in poem after poem: "At the headwaters of the Huanhua Stream, the owner chose this secluded woodland grove for his home." Notice something in the way Du Fu describes his home: he never says "my house." He says "my bamboo," "my stream," "my vegetable patch." His sense of home was not four walls and a roof — it was this whole landscape of water and woodland. A much larger kind of home than a thatched hut.

A small thing to try as you walk the path: think about the friend you've gone longest without contacting. If you sent them a message right now — "I've been thinking of you, come visit sometime" — how would they respond? That poem of Du Fu's, "A Guest Arrives," is exactly that feeling. More than a thousand years have passed, and human affection has not changed at all.

At the far end of the path you'll see a wall standing before you. That's our next stop.

Welcome to the Thatched Cottage Residence — I'd say this is the place in the entire complex most likely to tug at your heart. In 1997, the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum reconstructed this thatched dwelling on its original site, working from descriptions in Du Fu's poems and the layout of the cottage as recorded in the Ming dynasty, to recreate as faithfully as possible the home in which he lived.

Let's look at the layout. A main room at the center, a side wing on each flank, and a small courtyard in front. The main room served as both Du Fu's living space and his study: a wooden table, a bamboo chair, a bookshelf, an oil lamp — the complete "studio" of China's greatest poet. The left wing is the kitchen, with a clay-plastered stove, a cast-iron pot, and a bundle of firewood beside it. The right wing is the bedroom: a wooden bed frame and a thin quilt, the wind blowing in from all four sides in winter. The whole structure is bamboo and timber for the frame, yellow mud for the walls, and thatch for the roof. When it rained, Du Fu wrote: "No dry place remains beside the bed where the roof leaks; the rain falls unbroken, fine as hemp thread." Picture that: deep in the night, a man past fifty curls under a soaked blanket while the wind howls outside and water drips everywhere inside — unable to sleep, yet his thoughts turn to these words: "If only I could find ten thousand rooms of shelter, to house every cold and hungry scholar under heaven with a joyful face." That kind of grace is not given to most people.

The vegetable patch behind the house is also reconstructed from Du Fu's poems. He grew his own food at the cottage — in his verses he mentions lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and a small herb garden with medicinal plants. He was not a literary man who merely imagined the hardships of ordinary life. He lived those hardships with his own hands. That is what gives his poetry its particular power — he was not observing poverty from the outside; he was poverty itself.

The stone bench and the old well in front of the cottage are also worth a moment. This well is said to be where Du Fu drew his water — "spring water fills the land south and north of the house," that water filtering through from the Huanhua Stream. The well still holds clear, cold water today.

Visiting the Thatched Cottage Residence feels different from anywhere else in the complex. You don't need to "appreciate an artifact" here — you just need to feel. Stand in the courtyard, close your eyes, and imagine a certain autumn night twelve hundred years ago: a thin old man sitting at that table, by the light of one small oil flame, writing: "The watchman's drum cuts off all movement in the streets; at the border a lone goose cries into the autumn sky. From this night forward the dew will be white; the moon shines brightest over my home village." The home he could never return to. That homesickness crosses twelve hundred years and lands squarely in the chest.

The courtyard also holds a stone statue of Du Fu — right hand holding a brush, left hand resting on a stone, head slightly bowed, as if composing a line. It answers the bronze in the Grand Hall: that Du Fu is exhausted and bowed low; this one is quiet and inward. If you want a photograph that simply says "the Sage of Poetry was here," this statue is the spot.

That's the Thatched Cottage Residence. Behind it lies an actual archaeological site — the Tang Dynasty Ruins. Please follow me.

Friends, we've walked from the Main Gate all the way to the South Gate — about two hours, fourteen major stops along the central axis. From the Cao Tang plaque inscribed by Prince Guo, to three poets sharing an altar at the Ministry of Works Shrine, to the thatched stele pavilion, to the thatched cottage itself shaking in wind and rain, to the Flower Path between its red walls, to the Hall of Great Elegance and its lacquer-and-porcelain chronicle of a life — we have followed two paths at once: a path of commemoration, and a path of restoration. On one side, Du Fu honored as the "Sage of Poetry" and revered; on the other, Du Fu understood as a human being.

Two lines to take with you as you leave. The first is Du Fu's own: "Writing is a task that spans all ages; whether one has done it well or poorly, only one's own heart knows." The second is the poet and scholar Wen Yiduo's judgment: Du Fu is the most solemn, the most magnificent, and the most enduring light in four thousand years of Chinese civilization.

Thank you all for listening. If you'd like to go back and sit for a while in front of the thatched cottage, or linger in the Flower Path for a few more photographs, there's no hurry at all. Out the South Gate and turn left is Huanhua Stream Park — a stroll along the water is a lovely way to finish the afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your time in Chengdu. Goodbye!

We've arrived at the Thousand Poems Gallery — a covered corridor several hundred meters long, its walls lined from end to end with stone-carved transcriptions of Du Fu's poems in the calligraphy of celebrated hands across the centuries. The total number of inscriptions exceeds one thousand, making this the most concentrated display of Du Fu's poetry anywhere in the cottage.

Why build a gallery like this? Because Du Fu's poems were never meant to sit locked in a cabinet — they were made to be walked through. As you move along the corridor reading, a pattern emerges: his early and late poetry sound like they were written by different people. The young Du Fu wrote "I will reach the summit and see all the other mountains made small" — bold, full of sky, the whole world seemingly at his feet. But in his later years, what did he write about? Hunger: "Entering the house I heard wailing; my youngest son had already starved to death." Cold: "The quilt, unwashed for years, is stiff as iron." Loneliness: "Not one word from family or friends; sick and old, I have only this solitary boat." Read these poems from beginning to end, and you watch a man travel from the fire of youth to the desolation of old age. The weight of it is hard to put into words.

The calligraphy carved into these stones is itself a major attraction. The gallery brings together the brushwork of hundreds of calligraphers from ancient times to the present — among them the imperial hands of the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors, the celebrated modern masters Yu Youren and Guo Moruo, and contemporary names as well. The same poem in different hands becomes an entirely different experience. Look at this rendition of "Spring Night Rain": "Good rain knows its season; with spring it comes to life. It slips with the wind into the night, silently watering every living thing." This poem was written in Chengdu — no sorrow, no national grief, just the pure delight of a spring shower. A Du Fu we don't often meet.

Next to the gallery is the Bonsai Garden. Sichuan-style bonsai is one of China's five major bonsai traditions, known for its composition of tree and stone together, and for its twisting, dynamic forms. The garden holds what are nearly all prime examples of the Sichuan style — Jin Danzi, podocarpus, ginkgo, Pyracantha — some no larger than a hand, yet the trunks already carry the deeply furrowed, weathered texture of a century-old tree. Bonsai and Du Fu's poetry share the same aesthetic instinct: both are the art of containing the vast within the small. A twenty-character verse can hold all the sorrow of an era; a bonsai thirty centimeters tall can hold the presence of an entire mountain. This capacity to find the immense inside the miniature is one of the most distinctive qualities of East Asian aesthetics.

The bonsai garden also holds a hidden photo spot — in the northwest corner stands an old plum tree said to date from the Qing dynasty. In late winter or early spring when it is in full bloom, stand beneath it and shoot into the angled backlight; the petals go semi-transparent and the effect is dreamlike. Du Fu loved plum trees all his life and planted several at the cottage, though none of those original trees survive. This two-hundred-year-old Qing dynasty plum has picked up where the Sage left off, keeping watch over the garden in his place.

Thousand Poems Gallery and the Bonsai Garden — done. Now follow me to the most photogenic spot in the entire cottage: Flower Path.

Before us now is the Shaoling Thatched Cottage Stele Pavilion — the image you've almost certainly seen on postcards and in travel photos: a small open pavilion with a thatched roof, sheltering a single stone stele carved with four bold characters: Shaoling Caotang — "Shaoling's Thatched Cottage."

What does "Shaoling" mean? Du Fu styled himself "Shaoling Yenao" — the old rustic of Shaoling. Shaoling was a place on the southern outskirts of the Tang capital Chang'an, where Empress Xu of the Han dynasty was buried. Du Fu lived near there in his younger years, and the place left a lasting mark on him. He took it as his pen name — and yenao, "rustic elder," is perfectly fitting: for most of his life Du Fu was drifting, displaced, dependent on others' goodwill — truly an old man with no settled home.

Who inscribed the four characters on this stele? Once again, Prince Guo Yun Li — the same man who wrote the Cao Tang plaque above the main gate. You'll remember: in the twelfth year of the Yongzheng reign, Prince Guo was escorting the Dalai Lama back to Tibet and stopped in Chengdu to visit the cottage. He left these four characters behind, full of vigor and life — widely regarded as the finest example of his calligraphy. Consider the scene: a Manchu prince, a son of the Emperor, bowing before a Han poet who spent his life as a refugee. That image alone says something about Du Fu's place in Chinese culture — he transcended ethnicity, class, and era to become a shared spiritual ancestor for all Chinese people.

Small as it is, this pavilion is the most essential symbol of the entire cottage. For many people, the stele inscribed Shaoling Caotang simply is Du Fu's home. The thatched roof above it is built in the style of Du Fu's original hut, and every few years the old thatch is replaced with new — a gesture that feels less like maintenance and more like an act of remembrance that has never been interrupted.

Best spot for photos: Stand five or six meters in front of the pavilion and frame the whole structure in your shot. The texture of the thatching and the carved characters on the stele will both be clear. With bamboo behind and a plum branch or two in the foreground, the composition has a quality of deep antiquity. On a rainy day, water beads cling to the thatch and the stone slabs glisten — without any filter, it already reads like a Du Fu poem.

Let's move on — just a few more steps, and we reach what I think is the most affecting place in all of Du Fu's Cottage: the Thatched Cottage Residence.

We've arrived at the Poetry History Hall — the heart of the cottage's central axis, and the principal exhibition hall displaying illustrated poems and the story of Du Fu's life.

First, the name itself — why "Poetry History"? Because Du Fu's work has long been called shi shi — "history in verse." He lived at the precise turning point when the Tang Dynasty began its long decline, and he recorded what he witnessed: the fires of the An-Shi Rebellion, the desperate flight of the common people, the corruption of the court, the grinding hardship of everyday life, the beauty and fragility of the natural world. Taken together, his more than 1,400 surviving poems form a living chronicle of the dynasty's fall. Later generations said it plainly: to read Du Fu is to read Tang history.

At the center of the hall stands a full-length painted statue of Du Fu. Notice how it differs from the bronze figure we just saw in the Grand Hall. Here Du Fu is neatly dressed, his expression composed and resolute, a scroll in hand. One statue shows us the man of daily life — exhausted, worn down. This one shows us the poet of the spirit — focused, unbroken. Together they give us a complete portrait of the Sage of Poetry.

On the pillars of the hall hangs a couplet you must not miss. It was written in 1957 by Marshal Zhu De, after his visit to the cottage: "The thatched cottage endures through the ages; the Sage of Poetry's name illumines a thousand autumns." Ten characters that contain both space and time. Zhu De was a native of Sichuan who had read Du Fu's poetry in his youth; in his later years he returned to his homeland and made a special pilgrimage here, leaving behind this treasured inscription.

The display cases on either side hold different editions of Du Fu's collected poems. Look at this Song dynasty woodblock edition — one of the earliest surviving compilations of his work, eight hundred years old, the paper yellowed and the ink aged to a deep gray. Yet the words are still clear: "The kingdom has fallen; the mountains and rivers remain. Spring comes to the city; the grass and trees grow deep. Grieving over the times, the flowers draw tears. Hating this separation, the birds startle the heart." Eight hundred years, and not one drop of the anguish in those lines has diminished.

The paintings on the walls are illustrations of Du Fu's poems — works created by artists across the centuries in response to his verses. Take this scene from "Song of My Thatched Cottage Torn by Autumn Wind": an autumn gale scatters bundles of thatch across the sky; a group of children chase after the flying grass; an old man stumbles after them, helpless against the wind. Even if you've never read the poem, the painting alone conveys the desolation.

One detail in the Poetry History Hall that many visitors walk past — the floor. The green stone slabs are not new; they are Qing dynasty originals, polished smooth by the feet of countless people across several centuries. Stand still for a moment on these stones and think about who else has stood here — not Du Fu himself, his cottage is long gone, but the scholars and officials and ordinary people of every dynasty, the refugees of wartime seeking a moment's peace, and today, visitors from every corner of the world. That is the power of this place: it belongs to everyone.

Next, we continue along the central axis and pass through a small, low doorway — the Twig Gate.

Stepping out from the world of the poem and into the world of the archaeologist — we are now looking at a genuine excavation site: the Tang Dynasty Ruins. In 2001, during garden renovation work at the cottage, construction crews unexpectedly struck a Tang dynasty cultural layer. Archaeologists went on to uncover refuse pits, wells, hearths, drainage ditches, and a large quantity of Tang ceramic fragments and everyday objects. These finds provide physical evidence that the land to the west of Du Fu's cottage was indeed inhabited and lived in during his era, giving real archaeological weight to the scenes described in his poetry.

Look down into the excavation trenches. That grayish layer of earth is the Tang cultural stratum — laced with ceramic shards, charcoal, and fired clay particles. Most of the pottery is everyday coarse ware produced in the Chengdu area during the Tang: bowls, plates, jars. It's rough stuff — nothing like the refined official kiln pieces in a museum. But that roughness is precisely the point. It confirms that the people who lived here were ordinary people, not members of the elite. Du Fu was an ordinary person.

The most interesting find is the remnant of a well. Its walls were built with stacked ceramic rings and reached several meters down. The Chengdu Plain has a high water table, and a courtyard well would have supplied everything needed. Du Fu mentions wells in his poetry more than once — "The hall was built with its back to the city, shaded by white thatch; familiar with the riverside path, I look down on green fields beyond." The well was just outside the door; you went to draw water in the morning and looked up to see the distant hills. The archaeological finds give those lines a sudden, vivid three-dimensionality.

The discovery of these ruins also carries a larger significance: it confirmed that the site of today's cottage is authentic. There had always been skeptics — was this really where Du Fu lived, or did later generations simply choose a convenient spot to build a memorial? The 2001 excavation answered that question: this entire area was a working-class residential neighborhood in the Tang dynasty, which matches Du Fu's poetic descriptions closely. The ground we are standing on is, without any doubt, the bank of the Huanhua Stream where Du Fu made his home.

The ruins are small, but they hold more archaeological weight than any other spot in the cottage. Spend five minutes looking at the fingerprints pressed into the ceramic fragments — more than a thousand years ago, someone shaped this bowl with their hands. That person may not have known Du Fu at all. Perhaps they walked past his gate, or borrowed a green onion from him. History is not some grand abstraction. History is these small, broken, everyday things.

The Tang Dynasty Ruins are behind us now. Follow the bamboo path forward — the Thousand Poems Gallery is just ahead.

Welcome, everyone! Thank you for joining us at the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in Chengdu. I'll be your guide today, and we'll follow this route: Main Gate → Grand Hall → Poetry History Hall → Twig Gate → Ministry of Works Shrine → Shaoling Thatched Cottage Stele Pavilion → Thatched Cottage Residence → Tang Dynasty Ruins → Thousand Poems Gallery → Flower Path → Shadow Wall → Hall of Great Elegance → South Gate. Together, we'll walk through the former home of the Sage of Poetry and step back more than twelve hundred years — to a time when an ailing, impoverished old man living beside the Huanhua Stream wrote some of the most moving verses in the entire history of Chinese poetry.

Let's start with a little background on Du Fu's Thatched Cottage. This site was originally Du Fu's residence during his years as a wanderer in Chengdu. In 755 CE, the An-Shi Rebellion erupted and shattered the splendor of the Tang Dynasty. Du Fu fled with his family — first to Gansu, then onward to Sichuan. In the winter of 759 CE, with the help of friends including Yan Wu, he found this spot on the western outskirts of Chengdu and built a humble thatched hut with his own hands. He described it in verse: "West of Wanli Bridge, a house; north of Baihua Pool, a retreat" — the very ground we're standing on now. Du Fu lived here for nearly four years, the most peaceful stretch of his turbulent life. During that time he wrote over 240 poems — roughly one lasting work every five days.

Now, a word about Du Fu himself. His courtesy name was Zimei, and he styled himself Shaoling Yenao — "the old rustic of Shaoling." Posterity has honored him with the title "Sage of Poetry," and he is often paired with Li Bai as "Li and Du," the twin peaks of Tang verse. Du Fu lived through the moment when the Tang Dynasty tipped from its height into decline, and his poetry bears the weight of that catastrophe — raw, unflinching, and true. Later generations called his work "poetic history" because he documented an entire era in verse. His poems contain no romantic escapism; they are filled with the suffering of ordinary people, the brutality of war, and the fate of a nation. His most famous lines say it all: "If only I could find ten thousand rooms of shelter, to house every cold and hungry scholar under heaven with a joyful face" — he was living in a leaking thatched hut, yet his thoughts were with the poor of the entire world. That is Du Fu.

A few practical notes before we go in. Admission is 50 yuan per person; students and those under 18 pay half price at 25 yuan; visitors 60 and over, active military personnel, and people with disabilities enter free with valid ID. Opening hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with ticket sales ending at 5 p.m. Getting here by public transit: take Metro Line 4 to Caotang North Road Station and walk to the north gate, or take Metro Line 2 to Chengdu University of TCM Provincial Hospital Station and transfer to Bus 58 directly to the cottage. Allow two to three hours to see the full site at a comfortable pace.

Now look up at the plaque above the gate — those two characters, Cao Tang ("Thatched Cottage"), written with a bold, steady hand. Who wrote them? Yun Li, Prince Guo of the Qing dynasty — the seventeenth son of the Kangxi Emperor and a younger brother of the Yongzheng Emperor. In the twelfth year of Yongzheng's reign, Prince Guo was dispatched to escort the Dalai Lama back to Tibet. Passing through Chengdu, he made a special visit to pay his respects at the cottage and left this inscription behind. That was nearly three hundred years ago.

Now look at the couplet flanking the gate: "West of Wanli Bridge, a house; north of Baihua Pool, a retreat." These lines are taken from Du Fu's own poem "Remembering My Home by the Jin River" — his own address for the cottage, given in verse: Wanli Bridge lies to the west, Baihua Pool lies to the north, and his home sits between the two. More than a thousand years later, reading those lines, the poet's home feels as close as yesterday.

Photo tip: The main gate faces east, so morning light comes in from the side — the plaque and couplet show their finest detail then. Stand directly in front with a standard lens for a clean, well-balanced arrival shot.

All right — let's pass through the main gate and officially enter the cottage. Our first stop: the Grand Hall.