Category Culture

Du Fu was a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, honored as “Poet Sage”.

Although Du Fu is best known for his poetry, his pursuits were not purely literary. In fact, one of Du Fu’s dearest hopes was to help China as a civil servant. However, this dream was never realized. In fact, he lived during a time of great unrest of China. Du Fu’s life was marked by the An Lushan Rebellion, which lasted from 755 to 763. The An Lushan Rebellion is also known as the Tianbao Rebellion and the An Shi Rebellion.

He gained little distinction in the official examinations, but remained a minor civil servant who was then uprooted by the An Lu-shan rebellion that destroyed the first Tang dynasty.

He was usually poor, and occasionally close to starvation. The major turning points in his life were his meeting and friendship with Li Po (701-62), and the civil war, which opened his eyes to the sufferings of the common people.

Two major themes in Du Fu’s poetry are morality and history. For this reason, the works are not only of literary interest; philosophers and historians alike have found useful information and ideas in his works. Du Fu wrote poems on military tactics and the goings-on within the government. He even wrote poems to the emperor which included words of advice. One of his most famous works on moral engagement is also one of his earliest works. Titled “The Song of the Wagons,” this poetic work is about a soldier struggling with the suffering that he had to endure in order to fulfill his duties.

The whole life of Du Fu witnessed the Tang Dynasty from prosperity to decline. During this time, Du Fu led a largely itinerant life unsettled by wars, and received a pure and profound understanding of social phenomena. Du Fu’s compassion, for the state and for the age, was part of his most direct feelings in his poems. The over 1,450 poems, that are still circulated now, with remarkable accomplishments in thoughts and arts, have far reaching effects on the development of Chinese literature, and his poems have been dubbed the “Poet-History”. He is identified as the man of “Complete Symphony” who served as a link between the past and now, the greatest poet of “realism”.

Because of both the volume and influence of his writing, Du Fu has been hailed among Western readers as the Eastern Virgil, Ovid, or Shakespeare. Since his death, approximately fifteen hundred of his poems have survived and been handed down through the generations. Furthermore, not only have his poems been enjoyed in translation by Western readers, but they have also been enjoyed by other Asian nations, particularly Japan.

Libai was a Chinese poet. He was part of the group of Chinese scholars called the “Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup” in a poem by fellow poet Du Fu. Li Bai is often regarded, along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in China’s literary history. Approximately 1,100 of his poems remain today.

Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor. Like Du Fu, he spent much of his life travelling, although in his case it was because his wealth allowed him to, rather than because his poverty forced him. He is said, famously but untruly, to have drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.

Over a thousand poems are attributed to him, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for his yuefu poems and “Jinti Shi” poems, which are intense and often fantastic. He is often associated with Taoism: there is a strong element of this in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone.

Li Bai was a romantic in his view of life and in his verse. One of the most famous wine drinkers in China’s long tradition of imbibers, Li Bai frequently celebrated the joy of drinking. He also wrote of friendship, solitude, the passage of time, and the joys of nature with brilliance and great freshness of imagination. Li Bai superficially was famous for his poem, but the deeper thing behind his poem was his character of pursuing freedom and harmony with nature as well as his identity of Taoist. Li Bai liked alcohol and swords martial arts. So traditionally, rather than his splendid poem, the most classic impression of Li Bai left to his fans and poem lovers was that his free and drunk visit to mountains, waters and unexplored regions of ancient China with a sword.

At the early time, Li Bai was ambitious and wanted to have a career in social contribution. Li Bai was quite talented but he was reluctant to attend the imperial examination. On the contrary, he hoped someone could recommend him to be an official, so he created a classically famous prose named Yu Han Jin Zhou Shu, or a letter to Mr, Han, whose name was Han Chaozong, the governor of Jingzhou Region, roughly administrated today’s Hubei and part of Hunan provinces. He wanted to recommend himself via this letter; however, he was not responded at all. In 742, he was recommended to Emperor Xuanzong by a famous Taoist, who was also Li Bai’s friend and a welcomed figure of Emperor Xuanzong. From then on, Li Bai stepped into the official circle. This was commonly considered to be a good thing, but due to his unique characters and habit, this was also the beginning of his official life.

The Analects of Confucius is famed as the collection of the words and deeds of Confucius and has greatly influenced the culture of China and neighboring nations as the most cherished scripture of Confucianism. According to most traditional accounts, Confucius never wrote down his teachings. They were passed down verbally and later put in writing, and not necessarily in a very systematic way. The Analects is widely regarded as the most dependable record of his various sayings and conversations.

Confucius

Confucius is recognized as China’s first and greatest teacher, and his ideas have been the fertile soil in which the Chinese cultural tradition has flourished.

Confucius (551-479 BCE) was born in the ancient state of Lu into an era of unrelenting, escalating violence as seven of the strongest states in the pro to-Chinese world warred for supremacy. The landscape was not only fierce politically but also intellectually. Although Confucius enjoyed great popularity as a teacher, and many of his students found their way into political office, he personally had little influence in Lu. And so he began to travel from state to state as an itinerant philosopher to persuade political leaders that his teachings were a formula for social and political success. Eventually, his philosophies came to dictate the standard of behavior for all of society–including the emperor himself.

Contributions

The thoughts of Confucius has been the bedrock of Chinese main culture, and has brought influence to people’s mind and behavior even today. It is an important window to grasp Chinese culture to have a good understanding of Confucius.

He maintains the idea that everyone has the right to be educated, and that education should be offered to all classes. While spreading the spirit of being insatiable in learning and tireless in teaching, he strives for educating students in accordance with their aptitude by adopting an elicitation method of teaching.

As the founder of Confucianism, he contributed greatly to the development and success of traditional Chinese culture. He established benevolence and rites as the core of his theory. Benevolence is an ethical system as well as a moral realm, the core of which is the advocacy of love for humans.

Thoughts of Confucius

In the Analects, Confucius presents himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing”. He put the greatest emphasis on the importance of study, and it is the Chinese character for study (or learning) that opens the text. In this respect, he is seen by Chinese people as the Greatest Master. Far from trying to build a systematic theory of life and society or establish a formalism of rites, he wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and relentlessly study the outside world, mostly through the old scriptures and by relating the moral problems of the present to past political events (like the Annals) or past expressions of feelings by common people and reflective members of the elite (preserved in the poems of the Book of Odes).

In times of division, chaos, and endless wars between feudal states, he wanted to restore the Mandate of Heaven “天命” that could unify the “world” and bestow peace and prosperity on the people. Because his vision of personal and social perfections was framed as a revival of the ordered society of earlier times. Confucius is often considered a great proponent of conservatism. But a closer look at what he proposes often shows that he used (and perhaps twisted) past institutions and rites to push a new political agenda of his own: a revival of a unified royal state, whose rulers would succeed to power on the basis of their moral merit, not their parentage；these would be rulers devoted to their people, reaching for personal and social perfection.

Such a ruler would spread his own virtues to the people instead of imposing proper behavior with laws and rules. One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. Because his moral teachings emphasise self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rule, Confucius’s ethics may be considered a type of virtue ethics. His teachings rarely rely on reasoned argument, and ethical ideals and methods are conveyed more indirectly， through allusions, innuendo, and even tautology. This is why his teachings need to be examined and put into proper context in order to be understood.