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 The Du Fu Thatched Cottage is located beside the Flower Brook on the outskirts of Chengdu City.
Du Fu was a well-known poet in the Tang Dynasty (618 ~ 907A.D.), his poems reflected the miserable lives of the poor.
He was regarded as the "Father of Poems" because he always used his poems as a weapon to reveal the exploitation of the Emperor. This straw house has other names as: the Farmer's Cottage or the Flower Cottage, is also for he called himself a farmer.
During his stay, he wrote about 240 poems, today even with only less than one sixth of all the poems he wrote, shows every line filled with his love for his country. "Spring View", for instance, is most heartbreaking:
"Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure; And spring comes green again to trees and grasses Where petals have been shed like tears .And lonely birds have sung their grief. "
Other famous poems of his are: "Withered Palm", "Sick Orange", "Spring Rain", "My Cottage Damaged in Fall Wind", and etc.
The total area of Du Fu Thatched Cottage is about 20 acres, including two sections: the Farmer's House and the Poem Room. You can see the live size statue of Du Fu in the Farmer's House, and other statues of him made in the Ming and the Ch'ing Dynasty.
In the Poem Room, more than 30,000 pieces of poems, records and things used by Du Fu were collected here. Including the precious paintings with Du Fu's poems on it, and other masterpieces made exclusively for this house by some famous artists like Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and He Xiangning.
This straw house was renovated by people from almost every dynasty in memory of Du Fu. The latest renovation was made in the Ch'ing Dynasty. Now we have people from all over the world that were attracted by his reputation to come and salute to this great poet passed away more than one thousand years ago.
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