In August I walked into the Chengdu Thatched Cottage
I saw the thin eyes of the Tang Dynasty
Concerned about the country and the people, transparent and sharp
Sad and angry Sadness
Thoughts traveling through time and space
In your eyes I see
The glory of the prosperous Tang Dynasty is fleeting
In you In your hut I heard
The roaring autumn wind that was cold and harsh
In your poems I read
The clanking bones shouting for eternity
I also saw it above your thatched cottage
There is always a lone goose that becomes the shadow of the sun
And it is wrapped in your generous cloth
The vicissitudes of life
only a drop of tears
wet home
your thatched cottage
It is the home of the national spirit
The poems of the great Zhu De
"The thatched cottage will be left to future generations, and the poems will be remembered for thousands of years"
This is the best praise
I can’t meet you in the thatched cottage
I can’t drink and talk with you in the thatched cottage
I can only use it in front of your statue of the poet Saint Du Xiu
I remember you with affectionate eyes
Thinking about the spirit of your poems
Your poems about the bleak business in the hut
That is struggling in the hardships
I know August more than 1,200 years ago
The autumn wind roared in the sky of your home
You and your wife and children sighed in the darkness and coldness
< p>Even the children of NancunThey all bully you for being old and weak
What a day it is now
Our home is already full of warmth
We Children are already in tens of millions of
houses built with cement and steel bars
Hearted by your poems
Read your poems in memory
A poet named Du Fu is known as the Saint of Poetry
When the poets of the Tang Dynasty talked about the topic of Du Fu, it should be said that it was a relatively heavy topic. When I visited various places to visit the ruins of some historical celebrities, , pay great attention to the statues everywhere. I think it is good. Among the poets of the Tang Dynasty, one is the statue of Li Bai in the Li Bai Memorial Hall in Jiangyou, Sichuan, and the other is the statue of Du Fu in the Du Fu Cemetery in Gong County, Henan. The statue of Li Bai in Jiangyou depicts a high-spirited image of Li Bai who was about to leave Sichuan in his youth, holding his head high and strutting, very much like the Li Bai we imagined in the middle; and the statue of Du Fu in Gong County is just as we imagined, it is a twilight figure. The old man looked down at the devastated land with a sad face, which made people feel very heavy after looking at it.
We say that Du Fu’s life was certainly not like this. Du Fu also had his youth and his boyhood. We have seen Du Fu's various memories of his teenage life in his poems. For example, in his poem "Zhuang You", he recalled that when he was young, he used to travel in Shandong and Henan. He said It is "the debauchery between Qi and Zhao, the furry horses are quite wild. The spring songs are on the stage, and the winter hunting is next to the green Qiu." He sang on a stage in the spring, hunted on the edge of the village in the autumn and winter, and lived a wild life. He even had memories of his earlier life. When he was fifty, he wrote a poem called "The Collection of Baiyou". Recalling the situation when he was in his teens, he said, "Recalling the fifteenth year of my life, my heart He is still a child, as strong as a yellow calf walking back. In August, pears and jujubes are ripe in front of the court, and he can climb a tree a thousand times in one day." The general idea is that when he was fifteen years old, he was as lively as a child, and his heart was completely that of a child. As strong as a calf, running around. There are pear trees and jujube trees in his yard. When the fruits mature in autumn, he climbs up the trees a thousand times a day and keeps climbing to pick them. We can see that before he was 35 years old, Du Fu was once a wild young man; when he was in his teens, he was once a lively and strong young man. But if we now have a sculptor, he can create a young Du Fu who is mad and mad like Li Bai, or he can further create a young Du Fu who climbs on a tree to pick fruits, and then shows everyone that this is a poet. Du Fu.
Although you explained that this is a young Du Fu, this is a young Du Fu, I don’t think everyone will agree, because the Du Fu we recognize is such an image of caring about the country and the people.
There is a poem in Huangshan Valley in the Song Dynasty about Du Fu's portrait. There is a very good line in it called "The drunken eyebrows are filled with the sorrow of all nations." Even when Du Fu was drunk, his worries about the world and the sorrow of the world gathered between his brows. Later generations commented on Huang Shangu's poem and said that "Zi Mei is as beautiful as ever". This sentence fully described Du Fu's life. So I think that Du Fu's image has been fixed by history as a person who cared about the country and the people, so the topic of Du Fu must be a heavy topic. After listening to this, you may feel a bit heavy, but as the ancients said, Yan Canglang of the Song Dynasty said in his "Canglang Poetry Talk" that we need to enter such a state when reading some works, for example Reading "Li Sao", how to best read "Li Sao"? You must read it in a cadence, read it with tears streaming down your cheeks, read it, and read "Li Sao" with tears pouring down and your clothes getting wet. Only then will you truly understand "Li Sao". My personal reading experience is the same. The poems I like to read the most make my heart burn with fire and bring tears to my eyes. For those poems, I feel that I am most aesthetically moved at this time. So even though we are talking about such a heavy topic today, I hope you can still be patient and listen to me calmly.
Du Fu is a great poet and a great poet in the history of Chinese literature and also in the history of world literature. It seems that this point does not need to be mentioned again. It can be said that everyone on the earth knows it. What we are going to talk about today is Du Fu’s significance in cultural history, which is his influence. His significance has long overflowed beyond literature and poetry, and it is such a significance in the entire cultural history. So where do we look at this? I think we should first look at the evaluation of Du Fu by later generations.
Everyone knows that Du Fu’s lofty status in the history of literature was established by the people of the Song Dynasty. Let’s start with the people of the Song Dynasty. There was a politician in the Northern Song Dynasty named Wang Anshi. In my opinion, he was the politician with the noblest character and the most lofty ideals. He was truly a statesman rather than a politician. Wang Anshi respected Du Fu very much. In a poem about Du Fu's portrait, he said this. He said, "The heart to push the public is rare in ancient times, and I am willing to follow him until I die." It is my guess that your mind is a very noble and great mind that was very rare in ancient times. I very much hope that you can come back to life, let me make friends with you, let me be your friend. He admired Du Fu very much in ancient times.
Let’s take another look at the evaluation of Zhu Xi, the master of Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty. As we all know, Neo-Confucianists, especially those in the Southern Song Dynasty, were very strict, even harsh, in their evaluation of historical figures. This is the case with Zhu Xi. When we look at "Zhu Xi Yu Lei", there are very few historical figures in it who have not been criticized by him. Under the scrutiny of their very strict moral standards, many historical figures were ruthlessly criticized by them. But Zhu Xi believed that there were five great figures in Chinese history. Who were these five figures? The first is Zhuge Liang in the Han Dynasty; then there are three in the Tang Dynasty: one is Du Fu, one is Yan Zhenqing, one is Han Yu; and finally there is Fan Zhongyan in the Northern Song Dynasty. I don’t think I need to explain these two characters, Zhuge Liang and Fan Zhongyan, as everyone is familiar with them. They have made great achievements in politics and morality, which history has long judged. What is worth discussing are the three people in the Tang Dynasty who were proposed by Zhu Xi. He called these five people the "Five Gentlemen". Among the gentlemen of the Tang Dynasty, Du Fu ranked first. The second Yan Zhenqing, you may know that he is a great calligrapher and the founder of Yan style, but Yan Zhenqing is also a famous loyal minister and martyr. He was killed for resolutely safeguarding the unity of the country and resolutely opposing the rebellion and separatism of the feudal towns. He was killed by Li Xilie kill. Well, the third Han Yu, of course everyone knows that he is a famous figure in the history of Confucianism. He is also a big figure in the history of literature. He was the proposer of "Wen Yi Zhi Tao" and launched the ancient prose movement in the Tang Dynasty. At the same time, during Han Yu's political actions throughout his life, whenever the country needed someone to stand up and speak, he always spoke uprightly and risked his life to speak out. He was demoted to the remote places in the south many times. These four figures, except Du Fu, should be said to have made many achievements in politics and other actions throughout their lives. Only Du Fu should be said to be not a political figure. Du Fu's political achievements in his life are almost nothing worth mentioning, because he never got such an opportunity.
He wanted to serve his motherland, he wanted to be loyal to the court, and he opposed rebellion, but history did not give him much chance. Except for the fact that he occasionally spoke uprightly in the Suzong Dynasty and was alienated by the court, he was always unknown at other times, and even many times he was among the people. But why was such a person so highly praised by Zhu Xi? Why did Zhu Xi think that he had a place in a list ranging from Du Fu to Zhuge Liang to Fan Zhongyan? Then Zhu Xi made it very clear that the key is that the five of them have a great heart in common, and they all have made great achievements in morality and personality. Zhu Xi's original words said that they are all aboveboard and aboveboard, a kind of people who have become role models in terms of personality. This is obviously not a literary evaluation, but a cultural evaluation.
Later, in modern times, Mr. Wen Yiduo once wrote an article called "Du Fu". Mr. Wen Yiduo is a poet. His classical literature papers are not as dry and boring as our professors today. He writes them in a language like poetry. At the end of this article "Du Fu", Wen Yiduo said this. He said that Du Fu is the most solemn, most magnificent and most permanent brilliance in our four thousand years of culture. This is a very high cultural evaluation.
In modern times, in 1961, there was an international organization called the World Peace Council. In that year, the World Peace Council held a presidium meeting in the capital of Sweden. At that meeting, it was decided that the following year, in 1962, people all over the world would be called upon to commemorate four world cultural celebrities, one of whom is our Du Fu. It can be seen that from the Song Dynasty to modern times, from China to foreign countries, people have recognized the significance of Du Fu, and it is by no means limited to literary history. He is indeed a great figure in cultural history, and his significance belongs to the entire Chinese culture.
Let’s talk about the second point. We ask why Du Fu can become a representative figure of Chinese culture? In what ways does he play this representative role? Here we must speculate a little about the core spirit of Chinese culture. I personally believe that although Chinese culture is broad, profound and rich in connotation, one of its most important features is its humanistic spirit. It is always a people-centered culture that takes people as the starting point for all value judgments. This is a little different from the culture of other nations in the world. Therefore, in the pre-Qin era, although various schools of thought contended vigorously, various schools of thought proposed different concepts. But I think they have the same spirit, that is, when they think about problems, whether it is society or nature, their final destination is people, and their starting point is also people. This is a humanistic culture and humanistic thought. Among the hundreds of schools of thought in the pre-Qin period, it probably has the greatest influence on future generations, and it is also the one that has become the mainstream of our Chinese culture. It may be Confucianism and Taoism. Although these two schools argue with each other and seem to be incompatible with each other, the main thing they have in common is that they attach great importance to people. The difference is that Taoism attaches great importance to the value of individual life, while Confucianism pays more attention to the interests of the group. Confucianism attaches more importance to the group than to the individual, the interests of a family, a clan, or even a nation or a country. So in this respect, Confucianism and Taoism are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Because the ancestors of our Chinese nation in ancient China did not live in a very superior natural environment, they could not make a living and maintain their lives in tropical areas like the Indians did. And we are in the Yellow River Basin, where the water is deep and the soil is thick, and the climate is not very warm. In such a natural environment, there are surging rivers that need water control. If not, there will be floods. Therefore, for the Chinese nation, if there is too much emphasis on individual life and neglect of group interests, this will not be conducive to the survival and reproduction of our nation. Therefore, such an ethical concept and such a moral ideal represented by Confucianism have been historically selected as the core of our culture. Taoism is a supplement and Confucianism is the core. This is not the result of the struggle of some outstanding figure because of what Confucius and Mencius preached. This is a natural choice. In other words, I think this was the only choice in the pre-Qin era. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the Chinese nation to survive. In future generations, although our Chinese culture continues to develop and evolve, and absorbs many new external nutrients, Confucianism has always occupied a core position in this process of change. The rich evolution of Confucianism is basically a major thread in the evolution of traditional Chinese culture.
From this perspective, let’s take a look at Du Fu’s role in this process, or what kind of representativeness he has? When we look back at the history of the development of Confucianism, it is basically considered that there are two main schools: one is called Hanxue, and the other is called Songxue, which was proposed by Confucians in the Qing Dynasty. Between these two major climaxes, the Tang Dynasty should be said to be in a low ebb stage. No matter which history of thought or history of the development of Confucianism you look at, the Tang Dynasty does not occupy a high position. Before the Tang Dynasty, we cannot compare with the Han people, and after the Tang Dynasty, we cannot compare with the Song people. So, did the development of Confucianism stop during the Tang Dynasty? Are there any noteworthy representatives of Confucianism in the Tang Dynasty? Qian Mu has a point of view. Qian Mu believes in a book that it existed in the Tang Dynasty. The two most important representatives of Confucianism in the Tang Dynasty were Du Fu and Han Yu. It’s interesting, both are literary men. Let’s not talk about Han Yu, let’s look at Du Fu. In what sense can we say that Du Fu played a great role in the development of Confucianism in the Tang Dynasty? When everyone mentions the development of Confucianism and the Tang Dynasty, they will immediately think of the "Five Classics of Justice" in the early Tang Dynasty. Some students may not agree with my point of view, saying that Confucianism developed in the Tang Dynasty. Our "Five Classics of Justice" was compiled in the early Tang Dynasty and written by Kong Yingda and others. But I want to say that although "Five Classics Zhengyi" has been the most important reading among the commentaries on the Thirteen Classics for a long time, the concepts and some principles in "Five Classics Zhengyi" basically come from Han Confucianism, and it does not have much ground. A new analysis in academic theory. It can also be said that the development of Confucianism basically stagnated in the early Tang Dynasty due to the emergence of the "Five Classics of Justice". But Du Fu is different. Du Fu used his life, his life's practice and behavior to enrich and enrich the connotation of Confucianism. In essence, Confucianism is a practical philosophy, which attaches great importance to human behavior and human practice. So whether we look at Confucius or Mencius, in their youth or middle age, when they were in the prime of life, they no longer wrote books or published works. They traveled around the world, mainly promoting what they believed in from a practical perspective. road. When they finally felt that "the Tao is not working, it is already known", the Tao was no longer working, and finally they got older, so they came back to write books and spread their academic knowledge to future generations in the form of writings to expand their influence. In essence, it emphasizes practice the most, emphasizing the behaviors and achievements during life. In this sense, we say that Du Fu is a historical figure who best embodies Confucianism and even carries forward the spirit of Confucianism.
Let’s give a few small examples. Confucianism attaches great importance to benevolent government and the idea of ??benevolence, and advocates promoting benevolent government in the world. So Du Fu used his poems to "spare no effort" to advocate such an idea and promote such an ideal. Confucianism condemns inequality of wealth and poverty, believing it to be the greatest harm to society. Du Fu also criticized this phenomenon very severely. Although there are quite a lot of good literary works in the past that expose the suffering of people's livelihood and the inequality between rich and poor, I think everyone must agree that Du Fu's two lines of poem "The wine and meat smell of wine and meat in the rich families, and the bones on the road are frozen to death" are very descriptive in this aspect. The most thrilling famous sentences, so that whenever we hear about this aspect, we must first think of these two sentences. He has the deepest experience in this aspect.
For another example, Confucianism emphasizes the distinction between Yi and Xia. Confucianism emphasizes that our nation must have the dignity of a nation and safeguard the interests of the nation. In the relationship with foreign nations, we must pay attention to safeguarding the interests of our nation and also We must safeguard the dignity of our nation, emphasize the need to oppose aggression, and maintain the independence of our nation and country. Du Fu also did a very good job in this aspect. After the Anshi Rebellion, because the Anshi rebels quickly occupied Chang'an, countless high-ranking officials in the Tang Dynasty surrendered. They all defected and became rebels of Anshi and became puppet officials of a pseudo dynasty. This included the then prime minister Chen Xilie, the prince-in-law Zhang Bian and others, as well as Du Fu's good friend Wang Wei and others. Only Du Fu, only Du Fu, who was an official below the eighth rank and was truly a minor official, a sesame and mung bean official, upheld the national integrity. Of course, because Du Fu was too young as an official in Chang'an, he did not receive much attention from the Anshi rebels, and they just kept him there. However, he risked his life to escape from Chang'an, escaped from the battlefield where the Tang army was confronting the rebels, and then fled back to the seat of the Tang Dynasty's provisional government. Such a move was not done by anyone else at the time, except for one Du Fu. Therefore, in these aspects, Du Fu really embodies the spirit of Confucianism and uses his practice to demonstrate a Confucian moral style.
So I think I completely agree with Qian Mu's point of view. In the history of the development of Confucianism in the Tang Dynasty, Du Fu was a figure that cannot be ignored. He used his actions to explain the meaning of Confucian classics and what the moral norms in the minds of Confucians should be. Looks like, this is one aspect.
On the other hand, Confucianism attaches great importance to self-cultivation. This has been criticized for a long time, and everyone feels that this seems to be a proposition that should be denied. In fact, this is very important. In a civilized and highly developed society, what is its foundation? It should be a civilized individual, an individual with moral consciousness. An individual should not be forced by external forces. When doing some moral actions, it should come from the heart, a kind of inner self-discipline. Therefore, Confucianism attaches great importance to an individual's moral achievements and advocates a personality spirit. In this regard, Du Fu can be said to be a model. We see the kind of masculine spirit proposed in "Mencius", such a masculine spirit that "wealth and honor cannot be promiscuous, poverty and lowliness cannot be moved, and power cannot be subjugated." If If we look at a famous person in history, who is it? I think Du Fu, Du Fu achieved this very well and embodied this. Here I would like to draw special attention to Du Fu's identity. There are many people with lofty ideals in Chinese history. We can make a long list. But most of the people in this list are figures who have a relatively important position in politics. These figures shouldered the responsibilities of the world when the country was in crisis, with Du Fu being the only exception. Du Fu basically had a civilian identity throughout his life. He often called himself "Du Ling Commoner", "Du Ling has commoners", and he also called himself "Shaoling Ye Lao". Whether he is a commoner or a wild man, he is just a folk. An ordinary person, an ordinary citizen. As a commoner, he shows a kind of personality model advocated by Confucianism, which I think is of particularly important significance. Because for us ordinary people, if you call on everyone to learn from Zhuge Liang and Fan Zhongyan, it is of course meaningful and valuable. But everyone will find it difficult to learn from them. They are too far away from us, their status is too high, and most of us may never have such an opportunity to show our achievements in this area in our lives. An ordinary person is an ordinary person living an ordinary life. Can ordinary people achieve the perfection of moral personality by living an ordinary life? Okay, that's Du Fu. Confucianism originally advocated that "everyone can become Yao and Shun." Mencius said that everyone can become Yao, become Shun, and become a saint. Why? Because human nature is good, human nature is good. Later, Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty even advocated that "the streets are full of saints." It seems like the streets are full of kind people who could become saints. If we adopt a very strict definition of a saint, a very high standard, as high as that of Zhu Xi, someone may ask Wang Yangming, you said that the streets are full of saints, pull one out for me and see which one? A saint? Who can be called a saint according to strict standards? I think that for such a problem, we can at least ask one person to come up, and that is our Du Fu. He is a saint among common people. Although he is mainly a commoner, he is a saint. This is the second point I want to make. Du Fu is a representative figure in traditional Chinese culture with humanistic spirit as its core connotation.
Let’s talk about the third point. Du Fu not only embodies some Confucian moral and ethical concepts, he also enriches this connotation with his actions and even makes it more practical. This is also a major contribution to Confucianism and traditional culture. It is said that Du Fu has a benevolent heart, and that Du Fu is concerned about the country and the people. He cares about the people, the nation, and the country. Everyone knows this. Because everyone has seen it more or less from textbooks, and everyone has deeply experienced it when reading Du's poems, so we won't talk about this point. Let's take a look. Du Fu's benevolence doesn't stop there. In addition to loving his family, his friends, and his compatriots, his benevolent heart also extended to a larger scope. For example, love people of other ethnic groups. During the prosperous Tang Dynasty, border wars often occurred, with the Tang Dynasty on one side and other regimes established by other ethnic minorities on the other side. The nature of these wars is difficult to determine, but in at least a few of them it is certain that the wars waged by the Tang Empire were unjust. For example, take the war with Nanzhao. During the prosperous Tang Dynasty, they attacked Nanzhao. Nanzhao was a political power established by an ethnic minority in Yunnan.
At that time, whether judging from the New Book of Tang, the Old Book of Tang, or the Zizhi Tongjian, it should be said that the mistake was definitely in the Tang Dynasty. After the Tang Dynasty launched a war against Nanzhao, it failed many times and was defeated. Under such circumstances, many people at that time, including many famous poets, were inspired to have a fallacious patriotic tendency. They advocated that we should attack Nanzhao and defeat it. The authors of these poems, including Gao Shi and Chu Guangxi, all had similar poems. Only Du Fu clearly saw that this war was not just in nature, and he was the only one who clearly saw the huge damage this war would bring to the people's peaceful life. So he wrote "The Troops' Chariots". No one else could write the poem "The Troops' Chariots" at that time. Only Du Fu embodies his spirit of benevolence. He felt that people of foreign nationalities are also human beings, and our benevolence is Our hearts should also be extended to them, and we should maintain peace with them. It is the promotion of a kind heart.
In addition to this, Du Fu loves others. Loving others is originally advocated by Confucianism. What does Confucianism think benevolence is? Ren means loving others. In addition to his love for people, Du Fu's compassion and benevolence also extended to other animals besides humans, and to all life in the universe. Well, this point is also very prominent. We have seen Du Fu's loving descriptions countless times in his poems. Animals and plants are not only beautiful in appearance, but also strong and powerful in appearance, such as horses, eagles, and pine trees. , these objects that can arouse people's aesthetic sense of sublimity, even some small and not so beautiful things, Du Fu was also full of love when he wrote about them. Du Fu saw a dense fishing net stretched across the river. Many fish were trapped in the net, and he felt very sympathetic to those fish. He said, "Things can be overcome by small limitations, but the heart of a benevolent person must be compassionate." He believes that some creatures are big, some are small, and some are very tiny creatures, and some of their fates are bad and some are good. But people should have a caring heart for them. We know that the "heart of compassion" was originally proposed by Mencius, but when Mencius proposed the heart of compassion, the object of his concern was only people. He said that a child is about to fall into a well, and when we adults see it, we will feel compassion. It feels like a child is about to fall, and all he cares about is people. However, Du Fu's concern was extended to all life, all life in the universe.
On the other hand, Du Fu also used his own behavior and practice to make the kind of benevolence advocated by Confucianism more practical. Here we want to make a little comparison between the spirit of benevolence and righteousness in ancient China and the fraternity and so on in the West. I personally believe that the original source of the Western fraternity spirit is religion. The fraternity spirit derived from religion is of course a very valuable value and ethics. But when we push it back to its original origin, why was there this spirit of fraternity in the first place? One is to obey the guidance of the gods, who tell you to be fraternal; the other is to atone for the original sin committed by human ancestors - Adam and Eve committed the original sin. Of course, there is also a second level, a relatively low level one, which is to do good deeds during life in order to go to heaven after death. Therefore, doing good deeds and philanthropic love is a prepayment for the ticket to enter the kingdom of heaven in the future. I will pay a ticket here first. You can enter heaven after you die. But the benevolence and righteousness of the Chinese nation is not like this. Confucianism emphasizes that benevolence, righteousness, and reason are rooted in the heart, and they naturally flow out and arise naturally from the heart. Mencius had a very good judgment. He said, "When I am old, I am like the old man; when I am young, I am like the young man." That is to say, our benevolence comes first from the fact that I care for my own family. I respect and love my own elders and am filial to my own elders. By extension, I also love the elders of other families; I love my own children. By extension, I also love children all over the world. It is a natural flow of emotions from near to far, from close to distant. I feel that such a flow, in this sense, generates a heart of benevolence that is more natural, more in line with human nature, and more practical. Du Fu's poems and actions well illustrate such an ethical value. We see that in Du Fu's poems, there are many places where he writes about the misfortunes that he and his family have suffered, and the pain that he has caused, and at the same time extends to the people all over the world. When he went to Fu County to visit relatives, he suddenly found that his youngest son had died of starvation. Of course he was very sad. A child died of starvation. He also felt very ashamed. He felt that as a father, They actually didn't provide him with enough food, causing him to starve to death, which was very painful.
But at the same time, he immediately thought that there are many people in the world who are poorer than me, who are unemployed. The unemployed he was talking about were farmers who had lost their fields. He also thought of the soldiers guarding the front lines of the border. They suffered more than me. So he extended his care from the family to the entire nation and the entire country. When he was on a stormy night, his hut was scratched and the rain leaked. He couldn't sleep peacefully and the bed was damp. At this time, what he thought of was, "With thousands of vast mansions, it can shelter all the poor people in the world with joy, and it can be as safe as a mountain without being affected by wind or rain." He hoped that not only I would have a solid and stable hut and a place to stay, but also that all poor people in the world would have such a place to live and work in peace and contentment. Therefore, his benevolence is promoted.
I think the most typical work is the group of poems Du Fu wrote in Tonggu during the Qianyuan period. The group of poems is called "Seven Songs Composed While Living in Tonggu County during the Qianyuan Period". At that time, Du Fu fled from Tianshui in Gansu to Chengdu in Sichuan because he could no longer live and wanted to escape to Chengdu. Passing through Tonggu, which is now Chengxian County in Gansu Province, I went there to see it on the Baocheng-Chengdu Railway. So after Du Fu arrived in Tonggu, it was the twelfth lunar month of winter. He stayed there for a month, and his life fell into a desperate situation. He wrote seven poems there. Let's take a look at the order of these seven poems. The first one says "There is a guest, the word is beautiful, and the white hair is messy and hangs down over the ears." That is to say, I have a guest, his name is Du Zimei, he is already gray-haired, and his life is very poor; the second poem writes about his family, and in order to find something for his family to satisfy their hunger, he took a The shovel went to the middle of the ice and snow to dig up a wild plant called Huangdu, and brought this thing back to satisfy the family's hunger. It's a pity that we didn't dig out much. When we got home, it was "men moaning and women moaning". The whole family groaned from hunger and leaned against the wall, unable to speak. The second song writes about his love for his family; the third song, "There are brothers in the distance," misses his younger brothers who are scattered in various places; the fourth song, "There are sisters in Zhongli," thinks of his widowhood and the delay. The sister with three young children is far away in Zhongli; then the three poems five, six and seven think of the fate of the country, and think of the ongoing war and the turmoil in the world. His entire thinking process, the direction in which his emotions are expressed, is also an emotional process from near to far, from close to distant. I think this kind of promotion of benevolence is most in line with human nature, and it is also the most practical and natural. Therefore, in this regard, Du Fu can be regarded as an outstanding interpreter of the Confucian spirit of benevolence
(Source: cctv-10 "Hundred Schools Forum" column)