LEDBURY POETRY

From the Yellow River to the Yangtze gorges and down to the forested plains of Hunan, Michael Wood travels in the footsteps of China’s most loved poet. Born in 712, the age of Beowulf in Britain, Du Fu lived through the violent fall of China’s brilliant Tang Dynasty. A minor official, he took to the road as a refugee with his family, and became a destitute wanderer. But out of these events he produced what Harvard’s Stephen Owen calls ‘ the greatest poems in the Chinese language’ : words which ever since have been seen as an expression of what it means to be Chinese. Du Fu’s poetry is read by Sir Ian McKellen.

By kind permission of MayaVision