destinationDu Fu Thatched Cottage

Du Fu Thatched Cottage

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It is the former residence of Du Fu, a famous poet of the Tang Dynasty, when he lived in Chengdu. Du Fu lived here for nearly four years and created over a hundred poems. Therefore, this place is regarded as a “sacred land” in the history of Chinese literature. The current Du Fu Thatched Cottage was repaired many times during the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The cottage is located on the bank of the Huanhua River outside the west gate of Chengdu. There are numerous pavilions and ancient trees in the garden. After entering from the main entrance, the three main buildings, namely the Grand Corridor, the Hall of Poetry History, and the Memorial Temple of Du Gongbu, are arranged in sequence from south to north on the central axis. In the northeast of the Memorial Temple of Du Gongbu are the Shaoling Stele Pavilion and the former thatched cottage of the great poet. To the east of the thatched cottage is the Bonsai Garden. Going south, there are the Memorial Temple of Lady Huanhua, the Flower Path, the Hall of Great Elegance, and the Thatched Cottage Exhibition Hall near the south gate. The Hall of Great Elegance was originally the Daxiong Hall of the Thatched Cottage Temple and got its name from “The Record of the Hall of Great Elegance” written by Huang Tingjian, a litterateur of the Northern Song Dynasty. It was officially opened in 2002. The three characters “Hall of Great Elegance” on the plaque of the door are collected from the calligraphy of Yan Zhenqing, a famous calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty. Inside the Hall of Great Elegance, there is a large - scale colored - glazed inlaid lacquered mural, which is the largest in China so far, and 12 sculptures of famous poets from various dynasties, vividly displaying Du Fu's life and the development history of Chinese classical poetry. The iconic landscape - the former thatched cottage The former thatched cottage was rebuilt by referring to the characteristics of the folk houses in western Sichuan and has become the iconic landscape of Du Fu Thatched Cottage. In the Bonsai Garden on the east side of the thatched cottage, there is the “Wooden Inscription Corridor of Du Fu's Poems” built in 1999, displaying more than a hundred wooden inscriptions of Du Fu's poems, among which there are four masterpieces such as “the best of Du Fu's poems, the best of calligraphy, the best of nanmu wood, and the best of carving skills”. Since Du Fu once served as a staff officer of the military governor and was a staff member of the Ministry of Works, he was called Du Gongbu, and the memorial temple got its name accordingly. The memorial temple has three bays, with mountain - shaped gables and exposed columns, on a high platform with stone steps, and has latticed windows and lattice doors, looking solemn and stately. There are stone sculptures of Du Fu from the Ming and Qing dynasties in the temple. Among them, the half - body stone sculpture of Du Fu from the 30th year of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1602) is the earliest stone sculpture remaining in the thatched cottage. In front of Du Fu's thatched cottage back then, there was a path lined with flowers and trees on both sides. He once wrote in his poem: “The flower - lined path has never been swept for guests; My thatched door now opens for you for the first time.” Today's Flower Path is a small path with red walls on both sides connecting the memorial complex of Du Fu Thatched Cottage and the original Thatched Cottage Temple. At the end of the Flower Path is the “Shadow Wall of the Thatched Cottage”. The two characters “Thatched Cottage” inlaid with blue - and - white broken porcelain by Zhou Shanpei, the director of the Department of Industry Promotion in Sichuan at the end of the Qing Dynasty, are here. It has been damaged and repaired several times. There are three gates in the thatched cottage. The main entrance and the south gate are both in the south of the thatched cottage, and the north gate is in the northwest. The main entrance and the south gate are not far apart, and most tourists enter and exit through these two gates.
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