Du Fu

Du Fu lived through the violent fall of China's glorious Tang dynasty. He was poor, and sometimes nearly starved to death. Du Fu is another prominent historical figure on the list of the most famous people in ancient China, a country devoted to poetry. Unlike elder and friend Li Bai, who lived like a superstar poet showered with honors for his genius, Du Fu was not appreciated in life for his "extremely bold writing style and bizarre" and constant criticism of the regime. But with time, his work eventually allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as the "Shakespeare, or Hugo of China".

The political reflections in Du Fu's works are based on emotion rather than calculation. He wished people were less selfish and fulfilled their duties. However, because one could not disagree with his views, the facts so convincingly expressed in his poetry made him a central figure in Chinese epics. Du Fu's love for himself and for others is only part of the themes of his poetry: he also composed many poems on subjects that were previously considered unsuitable for expression in poetry. Although he composed all kinds of poetry, Du Fu is most famous for his near-poetry, a style of poetry that has many constraints on form and the number of words in a sentence. About two-thirds of his 1,500 extant works are in this form, and he is generally considered to be the epitome of the genre. His best poems in the genre use parallelism to add expressive content instead of just a conventional technical regulation.

• Born and died: 712–770
• Known as: Poet and politician