Du Fu

Du Fu
There are no contemporaneous portraits of Du Fu; this is a later artist's impression.
Native name	杜甫
Born	712 Gongyi, Henan, China
Died	770 (aged 57–58)
Occupation	Poetry, politician
Children	Zongwen Zongwu Feng'er
Relatives	Du Shenyan (grandfather) Du Xian (father)

Du Fu
Du's name in Chinese characters
Chinese name
Chinese	杜甫
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dù Fǔ Wade–Giles Tu4 Fu3 IPA [tû fù] Wu Suzhounese Dôu Fù Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Douh Fú Jyutping Dou6 Fu2 IPA [tou˨ fuː˧˥] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Tō͘ Hú Tâi-lô Tōo Hú Middle Chinese Middle Chinese /duoX pɨoX/
Courtesy name
Chinese	子美
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zǐmeǐ
Art name
Chinese	少陵野老
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Shàolíng Yělǎo
Japanese name
Kanji	杜甫
Hiragana	とほ
Transcriptions Romanization To Ho

Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; Wade–Giles: Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friend Li Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatest Chinese poets.^[1] His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.

Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages.^[1] He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire".^[2]