Du Fu, an erudite man of letters, lived in Chang'an around the time of An Lushan's rebellion where he was an eye-witness to the corruption of the Tang ruling group and the barbarity of the rebels. Later, his life as a wartime refugee gave him a better understanding of the sufferings of the common people with whom he was thrown during those harsh years. His poetry mirrored the ties which he lived and truthfully reflected his own concern for the destiny of his country and the plight of his people. In 760, after traveling in the Ch'in-chou region, Du Fu crossed the mountains to the southwest and came to Ch'eng-du, the greatest city of the West, where several of his friends had already been posted. Soon after Du Fu's arrival, Yen Wu, a family friend, became military governor. Du Fu built himself the famous "thatched hut" on the outskirts of the city and spent some of the happiest years of his life there. Later the rebellion was crushed, Yen Wu resumed his post, and Du Fu was appointed a military advisor, an appointment that was more likely an act of patronage than an homage to Du Fu's military genius. In 765 Yen Wu died, and the same year Du Fu began a journey down the Yangtze, lodging in various cities along the way. The longest of these stops was in K'uei-chou, White Emperor City, where Du Fu spent the years from 766-768: there the post wrote almost a quarter of his extant poems, including many of his most famous works, including:

Du Fu had a lasting influence on the development of realist Chinese poetry. Many of his poems are also extant, of which the most famous are "The Xin'an Official", "The officer at Tongguan", "the Shihao Official", "Lament of the New wife", "The Homeless" and "The Old Man Returns to War".

Of these two great masters Li Bai and Du Fu, another noted Tang poet, Han Yu, wrote: " The writings of Li and Du never lose their charm, radiating rays of light a hundred thousand feel high". For Li Bai, poetry was the means for the genius to find recognition in this world (the "qualifying" theory of poetry as a means to make oneself known), for Du Fu, poetry was involved in his future reputation, with his place in history.