In the West, poets like Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot turned observation into revelation — finding truth not in grandeur, but in the small rhythms of ordinary life. In China, centuries before, Du Fu gazed upon the same world with equal depth, transforming hardship into timeless reflection.
Tang Dynasty, around 760 CE
The fields outside Chengdu shimmered after rain. Du Fu, thin and weary, leaned against the wooden railing of his thatched cottage, listening to the sound of dripping leaves. He had once served the court, but now, exiled by war and illness, he lived simply — a poet watching the empire's sorrow unfold like a long, gray dawn.
Inside, his children slept lightly, their clothes patched and their stomachs only half full. He smiled faintly and began to write. His brush moved slowly, as though weighed by both love and grief.
"A nation broken, yet mountains and rivers remain; In the city, spring's grass and trees grow deep."
A friend visiting from the city read the lines aloud, tears welling in his eyes. "Master Du," he said softly, "you write of suffering without bitterness. How can you endure so much and still find peace?"
Du Fu looked toward the mist-covered hills. "To live," he said, "is to witness. And to witness truth — even painful truth — is the beginning of compassion. A poet must not only feel, but understand."
That evening, he wrote again by lamplight, his brush whispering through the quiet. Outside, frogs sang among the reeds, and the moon drifted over the river. For Du Fu, beauty was not escape — it was endurance, the courage to find meaning within impermanence.
His poetry did not seek perfection, but balance: between sorrow and faith, between the fleeting and the eternal. In the reflection of his humble lamp, the world's suffering and dignity became one.
As the moonlight faded and the first cocks crowed over Chengdu, Du Fu laid down his brush. His poems, grounded in empathy, would outlive dynasties. Yet wisdom wears many faces. Some men, like him, found truth through sorrow — others through wit, turning peril into lesson. Among them was Han Yu, whose sharp mind could calm storms of both politics and pride.