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Tu Fu (712–770) wrote this poem in the early summer of 764 while he and his family were living in Szechuan in a thatched cottage on a minor side-stream of the Min River, just outside the west wall of the provincial capital of Chengtu. Orioles are the harbingers of spring, as egrets are of summer. To the west of Chengtu are the Min Mountains, which formed the country’s border with Tibet and which included peaks in excess of 6,000 meters. The Min River flowed out of the mountains and past Chengtu and connected Western Szechuan, via the Yangtze, with the rest of China. Tu Fu may have been living in relative security far from the chaos of North China, but he is already thinking of leaving. A few kilometers southeast of his house was Ten Thousand Mile Bridge, where Chu-ko Liang (181–234) bid goodbye to an emissary heading for Chekiang province with the words, “a journey of ten thousand miles begins right here.” When Tu Fu’s patron died the following year, the poet and his family began their own journey down the Min and Yangtze Rivers in search of another sanctuary. This was the third in a series of four poems.

Quatrain

TU FU

A pair of golden orioles sings in green willows

a column of snowy egrets flies off in blue sky

my window contains peaks with a thousand years of ice

my gate harbors boats from ten thousand miles downriver