Du Fu's Thatched Cottage
May. 29th, 2013 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranNext up: my favourite place in all of Chengdu... Dufu's Thatched Cottage.
Chengdu was the home of the two most pre-eminent poets in all of Chinese history: Li Bai and Du Fu, both of the Tang Dynasty. Not to mention Su Shi (better known as Su Dong Po) of the Song Dynasty. Du Fu stayed here over four years and wrote many poems despite being financially destitute. His friend helped him build a thatched cottage in which he and his family stayed.
Some of the poems he wrote here are among my all-time favourites, including Travelling Again which often comes to me when I'm standing exhausted in an airport.
But perhaps the most poignant one written at this site was Song of My Cottage Unroofed by Autumn Gales". You can guess which cottage this was.
The poem describes the terrible state the poet is in. The winds have destroyed the roof of his house. The cold is setting in. He is being mocked and robbed by the village children and winter is closing in. Then he develops it with a new vision.
What if there were a house with a thousand, no ten thousand, rooms, where all the scholars of the world could live? And he pulls it back to an ending with a classic line (also memorable because in Chinese in begins with "Whoohoo!" which in this case means something like "Alas!")...
呜呼何时眼前突兀见此屋
吾庐独破受冻死亦足
Wū hū hé shí yǎn qián tū wù jiàn cǐ wū
Wú lú dú pò shòu dòng sǐ yì zú.
Alas! If I could just see this house suddenly before me
I would freeze satisfied in my broken house!
This is that poem on the stone below, and, as luck would have it, just as I was taking this picture, one of the other tourists read out that very line...
The original cottage is now long-gone, but throughout successive dynasties different replicas have stood at this site.
And tourists and poetry lovers from all over China come to pay their respects.
Inside, you can see recreations of what a Tang Dynasty house might have looked like (no doubt, as imagined in later eras).
An impression of Du Fu's study...
A bedroom, perhaps? Was this where his freezing children slept?
And a kitchen and dining room.
Not to mention the famous thatched roof itself...
The cottage lies in a large, ornamental park which is something of a shrine to poetry. Many of the buildings here date to the Ming Dynasty.
You can walk around and admire the poems...
Or even leave them yourself...
Under this pagoda, you can view the remains of ancient buildings (and apparently, they have even found traces of what they think was the original cottage in this park).
And the gardens provide a cool place to walk during Chengdu's warm Spring and Summer days...
Also, at the same site, a Hall of Odes, where you can see a mural depicting scenes from Du Fu's poems...
And statues of many of China's greatest poets. This is the enigmatic Li Shang Yin...
And Du Fu's great friend and contemporary, Li Bai. Together, they tower over Chinese poetry like, say, Mozart and Beethoven over western classical music. Li Bai is often thought of as the "Taoist", wild and freedom-loving, as dissolute as he was gifted. While Du Fu is the "Confucian", more sober and beset with worry, yet also deeply in touch with the human condition.
And in case this starts to seem like a parade of dead male poets, this is Li Qing Zhao, of the Song Dynasty, one of the greatest exponents of the Ci form of poetry.
As you might have guessed, all scholars are made welcome in this house...
After you've done with poetry, why not take a walk in the nearby Huanhuaxi Park?
Where helpful signs will help you identify the birds...
And point you in poetic directions...
Not to mention down carefully captioned paths...
Chengdu was the home of the two most pre-eminent poets in all of Chinese history: Li Bai and Du Fu, both of the Tang Dynasty. Not to mention Su Shi (better known as Su Dong Po) of the Song Dynasty. Du Fu stayed here over four years and wrote many poems despite being financially destitute. His friend helped him build a thatched cottage in which he and his family stayed.
Some of the poems he wrote here are among my all-time favourites, including Travelling Again which often comes to me when I'm standing exhausted in an airport.
But perhaps the most poignant one written at this site was Song of My Cottage Unroofed by Autumn Gales". You can guess which cottage this was.
The poem describes the terrible state the poet is in. The winds have destroyed the roof of his house. The cold is setting in. He is being mocked and robbed by the village children and winter is closing in. Then he develops it with a new vision.
What if there were a house with a thousand, no ten thousand, rooms, where all the scholars of the world could live? And he pulls it back to an ending with a classic line (also memorable because in Chinese in begins with "Whoohoo!" which in this case means something like "Alas!")...
呜呼何时眼前突兀见此屋
吾庐独破受冻死亦足
Wū hū hé shí yǎn qián tū wù jiàn cǐ wū
Wú lú dú pò shòu dòng sǐ yì zú.
Alas! If I could just see this house suddenly before me
I would freeze satisfied in my broken house!
This is that poem on the stone below, and, as luck would have it, just as I was taking this picture, one of the other tourists read out that very line...
The original cottage is now long-gone, but throughout successive dynasties different replicas have stood at this site.
And tourists and poetry lovers from all over China come to pay their respects.
Inside, you can see recreations of what a Tang Dynasty house might have looked like (no doubt, as imagined in later eras).
An impression of Du Fu's study...
A bedroom, perhaps? Was this where his freezing children slept?
And a kitchen and dining room.
Not to mention the famous thatched roof itself...
The cottage lies in a large, ornamental park which is something of a shrine to poetry. Many of the buildings here date to the Ming Dynasty.
You can walk around and admire the poems...
Or even leave them yourself...
Under this pagoda, you can view the remains of ancient buildings (and apparently, they have even found traces of what they think was the original cottage in this park).
And the gardens provide a cool place to walk during Chengdu's warm Spring and Summer days...
Also, at the same site, a Hall of Odes, where you can see a mural depicting scenes from Du Fu's poems...
And statues of many of China's greatest poets. This is the enigmatic Li Shang Yin...
And Du Fu's great friend and contemporary, Li Bai. Together, they tower over Chinese poetry like, say, Mozart and Beethoven over western classical music. Li Bai is often thought of as the "Taoist", wild and freedom-loving, as dissolute as he was gifted. While Du Fu is the "Confucian", more sober and beset with worry, yet also deeply in touch with the human condition.
And in case this starts to seem like a parade of dead male poets, this is Li Qing Zhao, of the Song Dynasty, one of the greatest exponents of the Ci form of poetry.
As you might have guessed, all scholars are made welcome in this house...
After you've done with poetry, why not take a walk in the nearby Huanhuaxi Park?
Where helpful signs will help you identify the birds...
And point you in poetic directions...
Not to mention down carefully captioned paths...
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 11:52 am (UTC)I loved very much the shots from Dufu's recreated cottage, and the poem you quoted is moving. The many-mansions effect ♥
no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 01:11 pm (UTC)That he is!
no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 01:10 pm (UTC)1) What gorgeous statues. Such diverse but lovely styles.
2) In the kitchen, that stove! It is a stove, isn't it? Can I pin that photo? I need a stove like that in my future house.
3) The poems. ♥
4) The captions.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 08:54 pm (UTC)