Ch'eng-tu

There is a portrait of Confucius at Ch’ü-fu attributed to Wu and another striking picture representing the struggle of a tortoise with a serpent, kuei she t’u, which is in the Prefect's official residence at Ch’êng-tu, Sze-ch’uan.

In many poems whose titles suggest that travel is their subject, it proves to be only a minor theme. An exception, however, is the series of poems which Tu Fu wrote during the journey in 759 from Chʻin-chou to Tʻung-ku and on to Chʻeng-tu. This long journey carried out in a short period over strange and extremely difficult terrain powerfully engaged the poet's mind and moved him to commemorate it in a continuing series of immediate impressions. Read together, these poems may be seen as a poetical yu-chi. There are more than twenty poems in all. With the exception of the first, the following come from the second stage from Tʻung-ku to Chʻeng-tu.

Tu Fu's translated poems on the floor. Meanwhile, in Ch'eng-tu, beyond the Ch'in Ling Mountains, Tu Fu found his thatch hut. The year 766 - Western count - Tibet about to invade again.