Ye Gongchao

Born in Gongxian, Henan province, to a distinguished family, Du Fu is regarded as one of the great poets of the Tang dynasty. In 755, at the age of forty-three, he obtained a minor official post. That year a general named An Lushan led a revolt and began marching toward the capital, and Du Fu left his post, intermittently serving a number of other minor posts for the Tang court while taking refuge in the western regions of China. Du opposed the complex poetry forms of his day, advocating derstood style. His surviving body of work consists of some 1,500 poems touching on a huge array of subjects.