"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor, Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic Self-Image

Tang Studies
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"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor,

Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic Self-Image
Christopher G Rea
To cite this article: Christopher G Rea (2005) "I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor,
Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic Self-Image, Tang Studies, 2005:23-24, 47-89
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/tng.2005.2005.23-24.47
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Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 05 April 2016, At: 20:57
Tang Studin 2,l-24 (200S~)
"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair":

Humor, Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic
Self-Image
CHRISTOPHER G. REA
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 20:57 05 April 2016
Du Fu fJ:-m (712-770) was not the first Tang poet to be

concerned about his own image, but the degree to which he sought
to shape it through his poetry is remarkable. While it may be
said that any text enables some sort of inference about its author,
Du Fu's poems exhibit an acute and conscious attention to self-
representation. As Stephen Owen writes, "no poet before Du Fu,
with the possible exception of Tao Qian, had ever made such
elaborate efforts to give an account of himself." 1 However, accepting
Owen's assenion that "the only aspect [ofDu Fu's identity] that can
be emphasized without distorting his work as a whole is the very
fact of its multiplicity"2 should not prevent us from highlighting
individual facets of Du Fu's self-portrayal that contribute to his
composite identity.
This paper examines Du Fu's inclination to make fun of
himself: a poetic trait that has been remarked upon in passing by
many critics but has never been the focus of a dedicated study.
William Hung introduces Du Fu as "a man of ambition, character,
and humor,"3 but he does not further discuss the relationship
Thanks to Wendy Swartz, Stephen Owen, and two anonymous reviewers for
their comments on an earlier version of this essay.
I Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginningr to 1911 (New

York: WW Norton, 1996), 416.
2Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981), 184.
3 William Hung, Tu Fu: Chinas Greatest Poet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
47
Rea: ••, Envy You You, N~ Tt~lhana Hai,·
between Du Fu's humor and his character or poetic an. David

McCraw more specifically detects a "wry, self-mocking humor" in
Du Fu's verse and notes: "Du Fu's humor can range from gentle
to derisive, from lighthearted to inscrutable .... But its prevailing
tone is the 'dry mock,' and its target is almost always himsel("4 Eva
Shan Chou draws our attention to "Du Fu's command of physical
comedy and his disarming ability to make himself a figure of fun,")
while Owen in his seminal study, the Great Agt of ChintSt POttry:
The High Tang, refers several times to Du Fu's "half-humorous"

and "mocking" self-image.6 As Owen's use of the qualification
"half-" implies, Du Fu's risible impulse is sometimes ambivalent
or incomplete, deriving its full effect only in relation to other
inclinations, such as grandeur, bitterness, heroism, or solipsism.
But if Du Fu's "legacy to later poets was the capacity to laugh at
oneself,"; as Owen states elsewhere, how did he laugh at himself,
and what can be learned from his various laughing self-portrayals?
HUMOR AND SELF-MOCKERY AS PoETIC MODES
Discussions of humor are sometimes hamstrung by humor's

subjectivity. As Qian Zhongshu ~Jt_(1910-1998) once
remarked, humor lies in how one perceives a thing and not in the
thing itself/~and this is one of the main reasons why humor is such
University Press, 1952), vii.
4David R. McCraw, Du Fus lAments from the South (Honolulu: University of

Hawai'i Press, 1992), 11, 221.
SEvan Shan Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu: Littrary Greatn~s and Cultural Contcct
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 182. Spelling changed from
"Tu Fu" to "Du Fu" for consistency.
6 Owen, The Great Age o/Chinese Poetry, 195, 207, 209, and 212.
7Stephen Owen, "The Selrs Perfect Mirror: Poetry as Autobiography," in The

Vitality 0/
the Lyric voice: Shih Poetryfrom the lAu Han to the Tang, ed. Shuen-fu
Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 94.
8Qian Zhongshu ~J1., "Shuo xiao" ~~, finri ping/un ~ B ~~, 1.22
(May 28, 1939): 13.
48
Tang SnuJin 23-24 (2005-06)
a tricky phenomenon to analyze in literature. What one reader

takes to be humorous and playful another may interpret as a bitter
self-reproach. Debates about literary humor often come down
to interpretation of tone, and Du Fu's poems are well known for
their dramatic shifts in tone between couplets and stanzas, or even
within a single line. Yet poets often leave clues to indicate their
humorous state of mind, just as they cue other affective modes.
Commentaries and annotations by poetry critics from the dynas~ic

period can also tell us when pre-modern readers thought the poet
was laughing at himself.
Of the various potentially "humorous" modes of self-
representation in Du Fu's poetry, the most common, yet perhaps
most complex, is self-mockery. Mockery is a mode that diminishes
its object, and even the most self-loathing Tang poet would have to
contend with the instinct of self-preservation. In poems intended
for a particular recipient a poet also had to consider the latter's
tastes and social expectations. The wise poet thus tempered his self-
mockery with humor so as to appear endearing-rather than simply
loathsome-to the friend or (potential) patron. Indeed, humor is
often the quality that distinguishes self-mockery from other types
of self-deprecation, which was de rigueur in Tang poetry. Like other
forms of self-deprecation, self-mockery can be a poetic strategy to
make oneself appear modest, but its humor can also disarm the
reader and mask this self-interest. A poet may use self-mockery to
pre-empt criticism by being his own harshest critic, or to "reassert
pride" by distancing himself from his past folly.9 If mockery
seems scornful when directed at others, it becomes a virtue when
directed at the sel£ In these various respects, self-mockery implies
an inversion: though ostensibly self-diminishing, it may in fact be
self-preserving.
9See Owen's analysis of Mei Yaochen's tIi~§ (I 002-1060) "On the Way
Back from Qinglong: for Xie Shizhi" ~ § Wft~itMi1L in Stephen Owen,
TraJitionJll Chinne Pomy and Poetics: Omm of the World (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 20H.
49
The term "self-mockery" does not resolve aUof the complexities
inherent in humorous self-representation. but it does allow us to
pose the following question: How did Du Fu mock. belinle. and
poke fun at himself in his poems. and how do these humorous and
self-mocking gestures contribute to his overall poetic self-image?
Whether his voice is subtle or forceful. tolerant or sardonic. the
poet's willingness to laugh at his own shortcomings suggests a
level of detached self-awareness and ironic self-knowledge. What.
then, did Du Fu find laughable about himself? What language and

themes did he favor in describing himself humorously. and how
do these differ in poems Du Fu wrote for himself versus those he
wrote to friends or patrons? How did he incorporate self-mocking
images into his poems, and how do these images contribute to
those poems' affective quality?
In this essay I highlight self-awareness as a key dimension of
Du Fu's poetic self-image. I argue that Du Fu reveals self-awareness
through his humor, perhaps even more acutely than through his
despair, and that this capacity testifies to his genuineness and
humanity. The time-honored impressions ofDu Fu are of an aging
man who refuses to submit to physical decline without a fight;
of a voice of social conscience whose compassion extends beyond
himself to his family, neighbors, and the common people; and of
a loyal subject pulled between competing impulses to civil service
and eremitism. In each of the following three sections of this essay,
I examine how humor contributes to one of these interrelated and
overlapping poetic personae. Since my goal is to elucidate how
humor and self-mockery function as a linguistic, structural, and
thematic element within and between the poems themselves, I have
grouped poems by their affective affinity rather than in traditional
chronological fashion. To illustrate the variety of Du Fu's humor,
I analyze several poems in their entirety and bring in couplets
and individual lines from other poems to highlight patterns and
resonances across Du Fu's corpus, while noting relevant contextual
differences. For poems that have been previously translated, I have
either used my own renderings or made selective modifications to
existing translations. While I do offer observations about how Du
50
Tang Shu/in 23-24 (2005....{)6)
Fu's humorous self-representations changed from one period of his

life to another, my discussion represents only a preliminary inquiry
into the larger issues of Du Fu's shifting tastes in self-representation
and the social utility of self-mockery among Tang literati.
"THOUGH WHITE-HFADED AND OlD, I DANCE AND SING"

By far the most frequently occurring thematic concerns in
Du Fu's self-mockery are the physical and psychological effects

of advancing age. As Du Fu mentions his own aging in relation
to a number of his other concerns, it deserves devoted attention
up front. He refers to himself as an "old man" (laoren ~ A, laofu
~:j(, wmg ~, laoweng ~~) dozens of times throughout his
fourteen-hundred-odd poems,1O at other times using the more
general "this old body" (lao shen ~ ~). In calling attention to his
advanced age, the poet does more than simply state an objective
fact; he also communicates his awareness of his own mortality. Du
Fu's descriptions of himself as "old and sick" (lao bing ~ wg, laoji
~~), "old and weak" (lao ruo ~~), or "old and thin" (lao shou
~:Ji) encourage us to pity him, particularly when he accompanies
such descriptions with enumerations of his family's poverty and
wretchedness. In other instances, however, Du Fu refers to himself
in the third person in a manner that affects grandeur. He is "the old
man with the stick" (zhangweng tt~), "the old man of Duling"
(or perhaps "Old Man Duling": Duling lao f±~l~, Duling weng
tl~~), or "the old rustic of Duling" (Duling yelao tl~!f~).
These singular titles simultaneously humble and elevate the bearer,
changing him from individual to icon.
Du Fu achieves this effect in "Cloudy Again" (Fuyin ~~),
the second of a pair of poems that he wrote in 767 in Kuizhou
10 These four terms appear approximately seventy-eight times throughout Du

Fu's poetry, and in most instances Du Fu is using them to refer to himself. This
and subsequent counts are based on a review of Hong Ye #t~ (William Hung)
t±~ij
et aI., eds., Du shi yinde I~, 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe,
1985).
51
during the last three years of his life. II Though both poems share
the theme of the poet's impending monaJity, the tone of their
closing couplets is a study in contrasts. Whereas the first poem,
~Clear Evening" (Wanqing ~OA), ends with a plaintive lament-
How quickly my life has been cast adrift I Now as scattered and
spent as dying embers (i8Jf.g~fiiJlI~ ' x_~~~JEE<)-
the second lessens the gravitas by pairing an aged persona with a
humorous physical description of old age:
Did you not see: ~~J!

Old Man Duling of the State of Kui, ~~z~f±~~
Half his teeth fallen out, deaf !f&J*i!~I+W
in his left ear? 12
In "Cloudy Again" the insertion of the short line "Did you

not see" breaks the rhythm of the poem, while the jingly rhyme of
weng ~ and long g (MC ?uwng and /uwng) adds to the humor of
the closing couplet. n
Du Fu's favorite trope for old age is white hair (baifa E3~,
baitou E3m, baishou E3§"), 14 around which he creates an avatar of
no fewer than five incarnations, including the "white-haired man"
(baitou lang E3m~~, baitou ren E3BltA), the "white-haired old
man" (baifa weng E3~~, baitou wmg E3m~), and once, with a
touch of elegance, the "old man with crane-white hair" (heft weng
IIPoem datings follow notes by the Song dynasty commentator Huang He Ii

It which are included in: Qiu Zhao'ao 11t~ts.,annot., Du Fu qUllnji tim ~
#L punct. Tai Liang ~1t, 3 vols. (Beijing: Zhuhai chubanshe, 1996).
12 My translation. Tide translation by William Hung. Subsequent unmarked
translations are my own.
13 Reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations (MC) based on William H.

Baxter's An Etymological Dicti01lllry of Common Chinn~ Charaetn'S (http://www-
personal.umich.edul%7Ewbaxter/etyrndict.htrnl [accessed February 21, 2008];
see d141-160.pdf arid d081-100.pdf), 142 and 84, respectively.
14 Du Fu refers to "white hair" in his poems at least seventy-three times.
52
1191_j).I~ Du Fu lamenrs his "thin[ning] hair" (tiUlln/a mtf) at
least ten times. and once. in one of his Tonggu [Q] fr poems. creates
the memorable image of himself as a traveler with "unkempt white
hair overhang[ing] his ears" Bm~~~~~.'6 Hair and teeth
share the tendency to fallout with old age. and Du Fu mentions
both frequendy in his later poems as a sign of his decrepirude. The
final couplet of "Rain" (Yu m).written around 767 when Du Fu
was in his mid-fifties. for instance, reads:
Leaning on my cane. Ican board the

boat;
To accompany this twilight of my
teeth and hair.
Another recurring trope for old-age infirmity is deafness,

which Du Fu mentions in the opening lines of "Living on Wat~r,
Expressing My Feelings: Presented to You Gentlemen" (Shuisu
qianxing fengcheng qungong 7.Kmil"$ ~gf0), written in the
summer of the foUowing year:
Stupid, dull, and full of maladies,

While traveling from afar in response
to your invitation, Irepeatedly
got lost.
My ears are so deaf others must
communicate with me by
writing;
1 ~ The latter appears in the opening couplet of "Twenty Rhymes to Dispel

Gloom: Presented to His Excellency Yen" (Qianmen fengcheng Van Gong ershi
yun lIr1'.~.1}=+.).1ide translation from Hung, Tu Pu, 213.
16 From the first poem in "Seven Poems Written Upon Taking Up Residence in
Tonggu Prefecture during the Ganyuan Year" (Qianyuan zhong yuju Tonggu
xian zuo qi shou fiJCtp.@~frMf'F-t§), written in 759 when Du Fu was
forty-seven. A note in Du Fu qUllnji seems to pick up on the humor of this image
by citing a line from the Han dynasty JU4u "Long Ballad" (Changge xing ~~
~T): "With my hair so thin, how long my cars seem!" (~~~ftiJ &). Qiu, Du
Fu qUllnji, 570.
53
My hair is too thin to hold a bamboo
comb.I"
These couplets point to two panems in how Du Fu constructS

his old man persona. First. he names not only the infirmities but
also the consequences (he gets lost; his comb won't stay in place) or
the steps he has taken to compensate (by having others write out
what they want to say to him). Second. Du Fu often conveys old

age by using multiple tropes together. Used in combination. these
symbolic and descriptive techniques elevate the potentially trite and
static idea of "old man" into a dynamic figure. In the second parallel
couplet of "Living on Water." Du Fu's two physical conditions (deaf
ears. thin hair) exist not in isolation. but in relation to something
external. and this relation places them within a narrative context.
Similarly. in the final line of "Cloudy Again" the double "halving"
(teeth half gone. kft ear deaf) conveys that Du Fu is still in the
process of becoming "Old Man Duling."
Reviewing the self-mocking vocabulary Du Fu uses to
construct his old-man persona can only take us so far, of course.
We must also examine how such tropes function within the context
of an entire poem. "Double Ninth at Mr. Cui's Estate in Lantian"
Uiuri Lantian Cuishi zhuang 1L B ti83ti:~H±) showcases Du
Fu's creative use of a self-mocking trope for the process of aging.
This is one of Du Fu's relatively early poems, written in 757, about
a decade before "Living on Water," while he was serving in a minor
post as Personnel ManagerlR in Huamou _1H. Though Du Fu was
17 The commentator 1t*.~.1:t±~

in Jiujill jizhu Du shi links these physial
infirmities to classic Daoist and Confucian texts: "The ltuJzj states: 'The Five
Tones make one deaf.' The Zuo zhwzn [states]: 'as one's hair decreases, the
capacity of one's mind increases.'" Cited in Hong. Du shi ,iNk, 196. The remark
about his hair being too thin to hold something in place. of course. brings to
mind the closing image in "Spring Gazing" (Chunwang tf il). which I discuss
below.
18 Here and below, translations or' official tides are from Charles o. Hucker,
A Dietioruzry of Offieill/ Titus in Impn-i4/ Chiruz (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1985).
54
TiI"t SnuJin 23-24 (200S-06)
only in his mid-fonics when he wrote this poem, his sentiments

suggest that he felt older.
In myoid age autumn makes me

melancholy, but I force
myself to cheer up,
On a whim I have joined you
today so that we may enjoy

ourselves to the fullest.
Though afraid my hat might be
blown off my balding head,
I would scorn to ask a companion
to straighten my cap for me.
The Lan River in the distance
pours down from a thousand
rushing mountain streams;
The Jade Mountains contend in
height, their twin peaks cold.
Come next year's reunion, I
wonder how many will be
healthy enough to attend?
Drunk, I closely examine the
dogwood leaves.
The arrival of the Double Ninth holiday finds the poet

brooding glumly over his advancing years, yet he banishes his own
concerns so as not to spoil his younger friends' gaiety.19 As Du
Fu and his friends scale the mountain, he realizes that the wind
threatens to blow his hat off and reveal his bald head, yet in his
pride he disdains to have a friend help him cover up the physical
effects of his advancing age. This moment of self-revelation is
typical Du Fu: he wants his reader to know that he has seen the
trick but rejected it. Pride overcomes embarrassment to convey a
19 This point is made inJin Shengtan ~~., DuFushixuan ttm~iB (Tainan:

Huaming chubanshe, 1969), 70.
ss
psychological humor even more delightful and touching than the
situational comedy of the metonymic image.
The episode of the wind-blown hat alludes specifically to a
m
story from fin shu tf IJ about Tao Qian's lIB (365-427) maternal
grandfather, MengJia ~a (8. EasternJin dynasty, 317-419). The
young Meng was then serving as an Adjutant «(lInjun ~_) to
Huan Wen miN! (312-373), whom he accompanied on a Double
Ninth outing to Dragon Mountain. A gust of wind blew Meng

Jia's hat off his head, and Huan Wen, observing that Meng had not
noticed, instructed Sun Sheng ~~ (ca. 302-374) to compose a
poem making fun of him. Unruffled, Meng responded with a poem
of his own~ the literary brilliance of which made the assemblage sigh
with admiration.20 Like Meng Jia, Du Fu had served as an Adjutant
in the Lantian region (modern-day Sha'anxi Province), and his
poem testifies to his own poise in the face of embarrassment. By
writing himself into Tao Qian's genealogy he has nothing to fear:
mockery is a small price to pay for poetry.
The Qing critic Xu Zeng ~it (8. 19th c.) interprets this
couplet slightly differently with respect to who is adjusting whose
cap: "Since he cannot very well be the only person to straighten
his hat, instead of straightening his own cap first, he instead asks
the others to straighten their caps so that they won't take note of
his own hat-adjusting."21 The question of which hat(s) Du Fu is
referring to turns on the interpretation of the grammatical function
of the wei ~ in the fourth line. Considerations of tonal balance
slightly favor Du Fu's hat (although having others straighten their
caps strikes me as the more ingenious ruse),22 as does the standard
definition of the verb fR (here pronounced qing), which means
20 Qiu, Du Fu qU4nji, 405; "Biography ofMengjia," fin shu, 98.2580-81.

2\ Xu Zeng ~ ~, Shuo 7itng shi ~~ ~, colI. & annot. Fan Weigang ~itM
(Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1990), 431-32. Xu's reading is nearly
identical to jin Shengtan's. jin Shengtan, Du Fu shi XUIln, 7~71.
22 Taking ~ as wei (i.e., in qushmg ~.; to assist, or to do something on

someone else's behalf) rather than wei (i.e., in pingshmg 3JL.; to do or to make)
results in strict parallelism: ~~JAJA~:¥JA I JAJA3¥3fLJAJA3JL.
S6
Til", StwJin 23-24 (200~-06)
(0 ask someone to do something on one's behalf: With respect

(0 (he tenor of the passage. however. the more salient issue is the
meaning of xi40 ~. Xu Zeng interprets the poet's laughter as his
way of "forcing himself to cheer up" (qi4ng zjltu4n ~ §J[), and
judges him successful: "When Old Du wrote this line he couldn't
help laughing so hard his beard shook!"23 In my reading, Du Fu
is making the type of gesture he would repeat in "Empty Purse"
(Kongrang ~II. discussed below). written the following year, in
which he also "exposes" his motive-a fear of embarrassment-but

reveals in the end "that he is not so fearful of embarrassment after
all:'24 In either case. the moment is highly entenaining and provides
a respite from somber meditations on mortality. The remainder
of the poem adheres to the typical "ascending heights" structure.
Having described the arrival and the climb, in the third coupler.
Du Fu surveys the grand view. In the final couplet he returns to
his sober (he is not as drunk as he pretends to be) reflections on
mortality, as if to make amends for the humor that has intruded
on what should be a moment of epiphany. Du Fu's concession to
convention in the penultimate line should not distract us, however,
from the self-revelation that he has already expressed through his
humor.
In terms of Du Fu's persona, the comic interlude in the
second couplet serves at least two functions. First, at a social level,
it shows Du Fu as a ready companion who is willing to put aside
his own worries and contribute to the general mirth. Second, at a
symbolic level, the object of focus in the self-mocking episode, the
hat, is a synecdoche for the scholar-official and a self-reminder of
one's duty to the state. By calling attention to this symbolic object,
Du Fu subdy extends the implications of his old age beyond the
personal, a move I will have more to say about in the following
sections.25
2.~ Xu, Shuo 1ilng shi, 432.

24 Owen, 7h~Vitality of th~Lyric W,ic~, 89.
25 In the third poem in "Autumn Wilds: Five Poems" (Qiuye wu shou f')(
57
Besides describing his physical infirmities in this playful
manner, Du Fu often wryly appraises how advancing age has
affected his temperament and mental faculties. Indeed, Du Fu
seemingly attributes to himself all of the undesirable psychological
changes that may accompany old age. In his dotage he has become
"foolish" (zhuo tlli), "stupid" or "naive" (yu ~), "wild" (lnuzng 1£),
or a "useless" or "worn-out" Confucian scholar lfuru "fI). Almost
invariably, this persona is developed through explicit contrast to a
more elevated figure.

When writing to a patron, for instance, Du Fu often invokes
the mental and physical consequences of his old age in advance
of a compliment to the poem's recipient. As a token of exchange
between two men of unequal social status, such poems were subject
to medieval conventions of humble language. (A friend of superior
rank. for example. was always the "elder" brother, regardless
of who was actually more advanced in years.) At times, Du Fu's
manner of self-deprecation is quite bald and strikes a tone that is
ff 1i n), written ten years later in 767, the tilting scholar's cap intrudes
upon a very different scene of self-cultivation, in which it physically
represents the intersection of the poet's civil servant and hermit personas:
Through rites and music I work on my shortcomings, m~1.JJ~~

Yet hills and forests bring me the greatest joy; L1J,*i3IJQ.~
As I toss my head, my silken hat casts a shadow, •• i'PMiIlIJ
As I sun my back, my bamboo books shine. .:W¥r.J't
McCraw writes that here "our poet is wryly mocking his rustic uncouthness." "In
stanza 2, eremitism still carries the day. But it undergoes a dramatic transition [in
stanza 3]; mention of Confucian exemplars reminds Du Fu of basic obligations
to family and to society that undercut high-minded resolutions. Now pricks of
Confucian conscience and joy in 'secluded things' become hateful contraries.
With a renunciatory toss of the head, his hermit persona manages to hold sway,
but sly humor upstages him. Our poet mocks himself for having let his official's
hat slip and for sunning his back when he should have been boning up on his
n
shortcomings (McCraw, Du Fus Lam~ntsfrom th~ South, 175-76). I have adapted
McCraw's translation to follow Qiu Zhao'ao's annotation that Sh41NlO C~ rPmmlJ
refers not to the slanting hat itself, but rather to the shadow it casts. This reading
seems to me to better preserve the parallel relationship between objects, as the next
line describes the book reRecting the SUD. See Wang Shijing 3:. ±., ed., Dushi
bianlan f±~fI!., 2 vols. (Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1986),2:1210.
58
Tn,StwJin 23-24 (200~)
(00 straightforward to be humorous. In the opening couplets of

....
A Wild Song Presented to Fourth Elder Brother" (Kuangge xing
zeng Sixiong ff~fflll!Y£), dated to around 765, for instance,
he states:
With you, my elder brother, I have

spent nearly one year;
You are the wonhy man, I the
foolish one.
You view wealth and rank as
nothing more than floating
clouds;
While I secretly hanker for official
success and covet power and
influence.
The contrast is black and white: Du Fu, as "younger brother,"

presents himself as the moral opposite of his "elder brother." The
flattery is too cliched and transparent (viewing wealth and rank
as "floating clouds," for instance, borrows a well-known line from
7he Anakcts) to be taken at face value. Intentionally or not, Du
Fu,s exaggerated self-deprecation itself constitutes a breach of
social etiquette by exposing the hollowness of such conventional
sentiments.
The mix of humor and melancholy in "To Editing Clerk Li:
Twenty-six Rhymes" (Song Li Jiaoshu ershiliu yun j!?¥&i1= +
/\ M), in contrast, undertakes a more complex agenda than simple
flattery. In this third stanza (lines 35-40 of 52), Du Fu tells his
patron that, though he was hopeless to begin with, his advancing
years have further diminished his sense of motivation:
Since childhood I have been lazy

by established habit;
Now in my later years, my
indolence has only worsened.
I am often saddened by remorse
for my stingy ways,
S9
As if awakening to how small the
world is.
I envy you your new teeth and hair.
And that, having acted. you can
be cautious the same evening.
Having reproached himself twice for habitual laziness (Ian

tfif. yong 11) and described the unhappy consequences, the poem
takes a surprising comic turn in the "teeth and hair" line. While not
erasing the palpable disappointment that pervades the poem. his
playful envy does lighten the mood momentarily. The line about
Ubeing cautious the same evening" (Le., having the capacity to catch
and correct one's own mistakes) then draws a parallel between the
corporeal signs of Du Fu's lost youth and the career costs of his
Usringy ways." The passage emphasizes that both physically and
mentally Du Fu is not Editing Clerk Li's equal.
Du Fu had recently finished a short stint as a low-ranking
official when he wrote this poem in 757. While the regrets he
expresses may well be sincere. his invocation of the physical signs
of aging must be regarded from a certain ironic distance. A man in
his mid-forties could be considered solidly "middle-aged" during
the Tang dynasty. but Du Fu is not yet the bald, deaf, toothless,
decrepit man he portrays himself to be in the poems he wrote in his
mid- to late-fifties. such as "Cloudy Again" or "Rain."
Du Fu's drinking poems use the popular trope of wine as
a vehicle for self-revelation. which is presented as a moment of
unguarded honesty, of "forgetting onesel(" In the final lines of
"Drunken Song Presented to District Defender Van the Tenth; An
Invitation to Gu the Eighth to Inscribe a Poem on the Wall" (Zuige
xing zeng Gongan Van Shi Shaofu qing Gu Ba tibi M!fX1TQ~0~
~+yJff~JmJ\'!~), which Du Fu wrote in 768 at age fifty-
six. he tells us how wine helped him briefly forget his advancing
years:
My ears warmed by wine, I forget

that my hair is white;
60
Tilnt SnuJin 23-24 (200s-06)
Moved by your generosity, I have

nothing to regret;
So I sing a ballad to serenade host
and guests. 26
As in the previous poem, Du Fu is addressing a friend and

patron. In "To Editing Clerk Li," a forty-five-year-old Du Fu
thinks of his younger friend and feels old; here a fifty-six-year-

old Du Fu thanks his host for his friendship and hospitality by
recounting how their drinking session made him feel momentarily
rejuvenated. Through these lines Du Fu testifies to his willingness
to let his guard down and make a spectacle of himself to cheer his
friends.
Conceding that one's youth has passed does not in itself
constitute passive acceptance of old age, of course. In "Returning
Home at Night" (Yegui ~M), which Du Fu wrote in 767 at age
fifty-five, one year before "Drunken Song," two physical tropes
of old age-white hair and walking stick-become foils for lively
behavior in the last couplet:
White-haired and old I may be,

but I dance and sing.
I lean on my staff, unwilling to
sleep--who's to stop me?
~M
The ringing carpt dinn of this last couplet echoes Tao Qian
and stands comparison with some ofLi Bai's E3 (701-762)
drinking poems.27 Rather than ignore death, the poet acknowledges
*
the physical signs of its approach and makes a spirited gesture
of defiance. Paradoxically, the invocation of "white hair" is a
remembering in forgetting, a self-reminder of the monality that is
being flouted.
26 This poem, written in ballad form (gaing ti ~fTII), ends with an extra 13th line.
27Cf. Tao Qian's "Substance, Shadow, Spirit" (Xing ying shen 1f~~~) or Li
Bai's "Drinking Poems" (Yinjiu shi jXift~).
61
By using such drinking tropes, the aging Du Fu subdy
implies kinship between himself and poets past. At other times, he
draws more explicit analogies to paragons of Daoist or Confucian
wisdom. His reference to himself as a gourd "too large to be useful"
(an allusion to Huizi ~ 7-) in "A Song of My Cares When Going
from the Capital to Fengxian," discussed in the following section,
is one such example. Another is found in the opening couplets of
"Departing Tonggu District" (Fa Tonggu xian ~~.frM), dated
758, in which Du Fu likens his peripatetic lifestyle to that of

"worthy men" (xian Ii) and "sages" (sh~ng ~). While the latter
were driven by the high-minded need to spread their teachings, he
himself is compelled to wander by circumstances that he suggests
his own personal failings may have exacerbated:
The worthy man never blackens his

stove,
The sage never warms his sitting
mat.2K
But as for me, a hungry, foolish man, i5tftM~A
What hopes have I for a settled ~tfE~~~
home?29
The final couplet combines self-reproach with an appeal for

sympathy. He is hungry and stupid (or perhaps hungry because he
has been stupid), but we still want him to find a settled home, even
if he has disclaimed that possibility. Like Mozi and Confucius, he
is fated to wander. Even if he does not measure up to these elevated
figures, the association somewhat undermines the persuasiveness
of his self-reproach and leaves us wondering whether Du Fu is
18Watson notes: "It is said that the ancient philosopher Mozi never used a stove
long enough to blacken it because he was so busy hurrying about the country
preaching against warfare and promoting his ideas on universal love. Confucius
was said never to have sat still long enough to warm his sining mat because he
was similarly untiring in his efforts to alleviate the ills of society" (Watson, 1ht
Stucttd POtms ofDu Fu, 78).
29 Translation modified from Watson, 1ht Stucud POtmJ of Du Pu, 78.
62
TiI"K StwJin 23-24 (200~)
castigating or ftanering himself: Here. as elsewhere. self-mockery

is a dual movement.
We find this gesture even in Du Fu's seemingly most extreme
and existentialist laughter. One example is fAAMadman" (Kuangfu
ff~). which Du Fu wrote in 761 during the Thatched Hut period.
Here Du Fu ponrays himself as isolated: his rich friends no longer
write to him and his sons are starving to death. McCraw introduces
the poem as fAacrisis ode, one that begins in gladness but ends
in despondency and madness."30 After two couplets describing the

idyllic natural scenery around his thatched hut. the mood abruptly
shifts in the poem's final couplets:
From richly salaried old friends

leners come no more;
My perpetually hungry young
ones' faces are an ashen hue.
Soon to fill a ditch, I can only
ventmy feelings;
I laugh at myself-a madman,
the older the madder. 3 1
McCraw comments that. "This wrenching turn foregrounds

Du Fu's predicament-how to provide for his family? [paragraph
break] For this the old fisherman has no answer. With a helpless
laugh. Du Fu opts to persist in his folly until he (and. presumably,
his famished sons) land 'in the ditch.' ... craziness is his last
defense against despair."32 The Qing dynasty critic Zhu Han
~ remarks that although Du Fu has every cause to resent his rich
'*
friends' indifference to or ignorance of his plight. "even though he
might soon find himselfin a ditch. he only laughs at himself to vent
his madness. To the end he harbors no grudge against his friends,
.~ McCraw, Du Pus Lammtsfrom th~ South, 24.
31 Translation of last line from McCraw, Du Fus Lammtsfrom th~South, 24.
32 Ibid.
63
Ra: "'I::.nvy You Your Nrw u~th aNi Hair·
which shows his generosity of spirit.·n The "venting" (shufizng ~

tIi.), which Zhu finds so admirable, is not pure magnanimity,
however. As Qiu Zhao'ao f1t~ts_
(1638-1717) notes (and as
Zhu's deliberate use of the word "generosity," lnuzng IJI, implies),
"venting" alludes to a couplet from Xiang Xiu's rCJ ~ (8. 3rd c.)
rhapsody "Thinking of the Past"- (Sijiu fu I~' Wilt): "Xi Kang had
a far-ranging will, which he released I Lii An had a generous heart,
which he vented."·~ The allusion reminds us again that the self-

awareness that Du Fu exhibits through his self-mockery is often
layered. By subtly likening himself to the sages of old, Du Fu again
reveals that-in spirit, at least-he is not as lonely, helpless, or
"mad" as his outward expression might suggest.
As poems like "A Madman" and "To Editing Clerk Li" reveal,
Du Fu views aging not as the root of mental problems such as
foolishness or madness, but rather as exacerbating his own pre-
existing flaws. Lazy Uby established habit," in his later years his
"indolence has only worsened"; he is a madman, "the older the
madder." Du Fu's use of humor and self-mockery renders his
conscious recognition (if not always passive acceptance) of his own
physical and psychological decline all the more poignant. While
perhaps temporarily lessening the burden of such knowledge, the
very act of joking about white hair or deafness itself draws attention
to the unwelcome fact of death's approach. Since this laughter
brings little consolation, it may best be viewed as signifying Du
Fu's response to an unwelcome situation over which he has no
control. He cannot stop death's advance, but by scapegoating his
aging persona he can at least evince a poetic triumph.
"OH, FOR A GRAND MANSION OF A HUNDRED THOUSAND ROOMs"
When Du Fu writes of finding himself in intractable

predicaments, as in "A Madman," humor and self-mockery often
keep him from falling into utter despondency. Through laughter he
.H Qiu, Du Fu quanji, 611.
.M Ibid., 612.
64
Til", Stwijn 2l-24 (200s-06)
corrects himself, checking any inclination to self-pity and forcing a

(urn to a broader perspective. Du Fu's rueful observations of how
advancing age has affected his body, mind, and ability to serve his
sovereign (discussed in the next section) are matched by frequent
expressions of frustration and sorrow at being unable to alleviate
(he suffering of his fellow man. These gestures of empathy derive
(heir affective impact in part from how Du Fu juxtaposes others'
suffering to his own "petty" worries, which he sometimes relates in
a comic manner.
We find this move in three poems Du Fu wrote in the years
immediately surrounding the outbreak of the An Lushan rebellion
in December 755. Of the poems in Du Fu's corpus, those from
this particularly itinerant period in his life are the most familiar
examples of his moral authority.35 Following ten frustrating years
in Chang'an, Du Fu left the capital in October 755 for Fengxian,
where he had moved his family the previous year. The rebellion
swept away a post in the capital that Du Fu had recently been
granted, and he and his family became refugees. After traveling
through several districts, they settled in Qiang Village in 756.
When the emperor Suzong ascended the throne that July, Du Fu
left his family in Qiang Village in the hopes of serving his new
sovereign, but he was captured en route by rebels and taken to
Chang'an. Escaping Chang'an in spring 757, Du Fu again made
his way to Fengxian, which by then was serving as the temporary
Tang capital. After a brief stint as an official in the coun-in-exile,
Du Fu was given leave to rejoin his family in Qiang Village. The
suffering of his countrymen he encountered during these travels
became the subject of some of his most moving poems.
Du Fu is perhaps at his most self-mocking in the opening
lines of a poem well known for the forceful rhetoric of its moral
outrage, "A Song of My Cares When Going from the Capital to
Fengxian" (Zi jing fu Fengxian xian yonghuai wubai zi E3 J?:jft$
)fc~~tI.li S~). In this long poem, written in 755, the narrative
weaves between first-hand storytelling, personal reflection, and
3" Chou, &consiJning Tu Fu, 62.
65
socio-political critique. The poem opens with a birrcr self-reproach
of his youthful pretension and subsequent lack of attainmcnt:
A man of Duling in commoner's clothes,

lhe older he grows, the more foolish his
fancies.
So na·ivein all that he swore to
become!-
He secretly likened himself to Hou Ji

and Xie.36
He proved at last too large to be useful, Ji5~PX?tri
White-haired now, and willing to B§tt~rM1
bear privation.
When the coffin closes, all will be settled; §t§$JtIJB
Yet these goals ever look for fulfillment.37 1Lt$~Jm.f§
Here Du Fu mocks himself and anticipates his own death,
yet neither his self-reproach nor his fatalism should be taken at face
value. By invoking the coffin, Du Fu is getting ahead of himself:
he is still very much alive and, he suggests, his hopes may yet find
redemption. As Owen points out, Du Fu's description of himself as
"too large to be useful" (huoluo 1i~) is a tongue-in-cheek allusion
to the story of Huizi's gourd in the Zhuangzi ~ T, a parable about
putting things to their proper use. While mocking himself, he "at
the same time quietly asserts the magnitude of his capacities, if only
their use were known."38 When Du Fu later tells of being mocked
by others ("I earn sneers from old men, once fellow students" l&~
fOJ~~), his powerful response ("yet I sing loudly, and with fierce
intensity" &~5fff?fi ~!n
indicates that his self-confidence does
Hou Ji 16ft and Xie ~ were ministers to the legendary sage-kings Yao ~ and
.>,(,
Yu ~, respectively.
r Translated selections are from Owen, Anthology, 417-20.
_~8 Owen, Anthology, 416.
66
Tang StwJjn 23-24 (2005-06)
not depend on the good opinion of those around him.39 Du Fu

contradicts the ineptness he has just avowed through incisive social
criticism:
Crimson gates reek with meat and wine,

While on the streets, bones of the
frozen dead.
Grimness and grandeur, a mere foot

apan,
So upsetting Icannot continue to tell.
Whereas his earlier self-mockery employed straightforward

·
descnptors (e.g., "0 Id" 1_
, £aD ~
~; rOO I·
"C IS,h" zh uo 1UJ;
+W" naive,
.." yu JIl
m~~;
and "white-haired," baishou 8 "§), his castigation of the indifferent
rich uses indirect imagery and juxtaposition. The expression of
concern for the poor from the "naIve" and "foolish" man of Duling
resonates because we see nothing foolish in his emotions.
"A Song of My Cares" is replete with lines enumerating the
poet's personal misfortunes, including the death of his infant son,
but the self-pity is momentary. As in "Northern Journey" (Beizheng
:ftflE, discussed below) and other poems, Du Fu's self-mockery
demonstrates that he views himself in a proper, humble perspective
that does not allow such self-indulgence, often staging a turn away
from, rather than to, the self:
To traditional Chinese commentators, the sincerity of the
altruistic sentif:'lents Du Fu expresses in poems like "A Song of
My Cares" was beyond question. Yet the image of Du Fu as utterly
selfless and solely concerned with national welfare must read against
the pathetic, poverty-stricken sojourner image he cultivates at the
poem's outset. The self-mockery in the opening lines belittles, but
does not extinguish, Du Fu's bitterness and disappointment about
his personal condition. Neither is he above making the occasional
The author of Gmg Xi shihua ~7i~~

_~9 reads this couplet as a sign of Du Fu's
moral fidelity despite "not meeting his time": "The world does not understand
me, but I stay constant" (t!t~ft~ffij PJT~~~). See Qiu, Du Fu quanji, 232.
67
Rn: -, Envy You Your N~ l~nh aNi Hair·
plea for symparhy, as when he pours out his family's troubles in lines
80 ro 94 (nor excerpted here). This plea, of course, sets the stage
for a final dismissal of rhe personal worries he has just enumerated,
which awes rhe reader with his grearer concern for the common
people and rhe srare.
Compared ro "A Song of My Cares," Du Fu's self-image in
rhe rhird poem in rhe "Qiang Village" trilogy (Qiangcun san shou
;tf~t~:0·)is less self-mocking and closer to domestic situational
comedy. Du Fu wrote this poem two years later, after the emperor
granted Du Fu home leave and he left Fengxian to rejoin his family
in Qiang Village. The poem opens with a startling comic scene of
Du Fu dispersing a Rock of quarreling chickens as guests arrive at
his cottage door:
A Rock of chickens is wildly squawking,

As guests arrive the chickens squabble
still.
Only when I scatter the chickens into
the trees,
Do I hear the knocking at my
brushwood gate.
In this vivid, everyday setting, chickens surround the poet

in a Rurry of sound and movement. Their. ubiquity in the scene
is underscored linguistically, with three chickens appearing in the
first three lines. Jin Shengtan ~~Dl (ca. 1608-1661) notes: "One
explanation has it that [these four lines] describe the gate-knocking,
but three of the lines are about chickens. The writing is remarkably
unaffected."40 Here Du Fu pokes fun at himself indirectly through
mimesis, rather than via epithet or physical self-description, as in "A
Song of My Cares." By opening the poem with a light touch of the
everyday, Du Fu also sets a departure point for the development of
his self-image throughout the poem. Line four marks a transition
in the poet's concerns from self to others:
40 jin, Du Fu shi xuan, 38.
68
Tang ShuJin 23-24 (200s-06)
Village elders, four or five in number, )(~[yliA

Ask me of my long travels. r~'fX~jjfT
In hand, each carries something, ~rpft~tI
The jugs tip, some beer dark, some dear. ilfifjilfl~
"Don't refuse this beer for its thin 8avor,41 EfI$~~~
For no one plows our millet fields. _!1!!~Am
Wars still continue unceasing, ~1fiI&*I~'
And our children have all joined the 5l_a_fiE
eastern campaign."
In the middle couplets, Du Fu adds another dimension to

his poetic persona by shifting subjectivity to the common people
and letting them recount their hardships directly. Self-effacement
appears frequently in Du Fu's poems, but his relinquishing of
narrative voice here testifies to his ability to transcend self-interest:
"Elders, let me sing for you, m~)(~!fX

In the midst of such hardships, I am _Ilm.~m
ashamed by your generosity."
The song ends-I look to heaven
and sigh,
And the faces of those seated around
are streaked with tears.
The theme of "sentiment that goes beyond words" gains

its poignancy not least from the poem's acoustic element-from
the squawking chickens to the knocking at the gate; from the
neighbors' questions and stories to the poet's singing; and finally
the sighs and weeping of the closing couplet. Du Fu himself
says little; Jin Shengtan repeatedly points out that Du Fu "has
no words with which to respond" to his visitors.42 The touching
41 On the translation of jiu ift, see Owen, Anthology, xlvi.
42 Jin, Du Fu shi xuan, 38, 39.
69
Whuman intimacy"H that Du Fu shares with his humble neighbors,
a communion amidst misfonune, is underscored by the contrast
between the poet's personal beleaguerment in the first couplets and
the shared sentiments represented by the sighs and tears in the final
couplet. Self-mockery thus acts as not only an engaging mimetic
device, but also as a structuring component, a comic prelude to a
tragic finale.
Homecoming scenes appear frequently in Du Fu's poetry,
typically generating a dynamic resonance between the national and

the personal. The plight of the nation is evinced by the hardships
encountered by Du Fu's family and neighbors. Though Du Fu's
enumeration of these sorrows is often plaintive, he sometimes
instead expresses the joys of reunion humorously. In the middle of
the third stanza of the poem "Northern Journey," for example, we
encounter the set-upon poet in a situation similar to that in "Qiang
Village":
Here's powder and mascara-I'll

unwrap them-
Quilts, coverlets-I'll lay them all out. ~~m1.l91J
The face of my thin wife regains its ~~OO~*
brightness;
My silly girls start in combing their
own hair.
They copy all the things they've seen
their mother do,
Step by step applying morning makeup,
Taking their time, smearing on rouge
and powder-
How ridiculous-drawing eyebrows
this wide!
But I'm home alive, facing my young
ones,
And it's as though I've forgotten about
·n Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu, 76.
70
Tang StwJin 23-24 (200S~)
hunger and thirst.

They keep asking questions, outdoing
each other in pulling my beard,
But who'd have the heart to scold them? mEffE!!nDl~
When I recall my weary days among I~LE[3,:(£ Jv.X ~
the rebels,
All this noisy pestering I joyfully accept. 44
Like "Qiang Village," which was written the same year,

"Nonhern Journey" has been cited as an example of Du Fu's Rair for
comic realism.45Bunon Watson writes that "The mood here isall gaiety
and madcap humor, a brief moment of brightness before the poem
quits the domestic scene and turns to solemn concerns of national
policy."46Jin Shengtan does not even allow Du Fu this brief respite,
assening: "The topic of returning home to the north runs throughout
the entire poem, but [the poet] worries only about the kingdom
and is wholly preoccupied with thinking of ways to help. Although
from couplets sixteen to twenty-three he brieRy discusses his wife
and daughters, in fact his mind is purely on matters of coun."47 Yang
Lun's interpretation falls between these extremes: "the description of
his reunion with his children is both sad and hilarious."48Chen Yixin
~~11fX likewise characterizes the scene as expressing the "mixture of
emotions" associated with homecoming.49
To be sure, his daughters' innocence distracts the poet from his
weighty ruminations. Domestic luan divens his thoughts from national
44 Watson, 1ht &~d Pomu of Du Pu, xix-xx. Last couplet from Hung, Tu Pu, 117.
4'; Chou, &considning Tu Fu, 122.
46 Watson, 7h~ &keud Ponns of Du Fu, xxi.
47 lin, Du Fu shi xuan, 52.

Quoted in Chen Yixin ~JtEi11ft, Du Fupingzhuan
411 ttm~ffJ, 3 vols. (Shanghai:
Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982), 1:393.
49Chen, Du Fu pingzhuan, 1:393. Note that although Chen agrees with Yang
Lun regarding the mixed emotions of the reunion, he disagrees with Yang's
extrapolation that Du Fu is drawing from an earlier source.
71
Rca: -/ Envy YDU YDU' N~ u~,hand Hai,-
Juan, before those grave national circumstances that bcgat his family's
predicament return to mind. In my reading, however, by painting
this amusing yet touching scene, Du Fu may also be seen as elevating
playful self-mockery to a trans-subjective level that encompasses the
wider family "self." Whereas in "Qiang Village" Du Fu surrounds
himself with "wildly squawking" (Juan jiao ~ tl~) chickens, on this
return home he willfully submits to the "noisy pestering" (zaluan guo
m ~Liji5) of his daughters with sympathetic tolerance. 50
A final example will serve to demonstrate how Du Fu's

empathy and social conscience gain value in relation to the foil of
the humorous or degraded self. The closing couplets of "A Song of
How My Thatch Roof Was Destroyed by Autumn Winds" (Cao-
wu wei qiufeng suopo ge *~~tkmpfT~~), which Du Fu wrote
several years later during the relatively stable years when his family
was living near Chengdu, tell how after his roof has been blown off
by fierce autumn winds "a group of boys from the southern village
takes advantage of my weak old age" (mt1~jfJtt~:g.~)]) to
make off with the thatch. He rails at them "until my lips burn and
mouth goes dry, but to no avail" (§~D~n.¥/F1~), and then
rests on his cane and sighs to himself. The "physical humor" and
"concrete realism" of these lines convey Du Fu's knowledge of how
he is making a fool of himself: before he "shak[es] off ... self-
absorption for a larger cause" near the end of the poem:51
Oh, for a grand mansion of a

hundred thousand rooms,
Under whose vast roof all the
world's poor can live with
smiling faces,
Xu Zeng describes the racket of the chickens in "Qiang Village" (Xu, Shuo
'to
Tang shi, 42) in words similar to those Du Fu uses here to describe "this noisy
pestering": "the clamor of the chickens is so noisy that it leaves him helpless"
(-h-fi~ · iji5A~imi).
'il Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu, 125, 126.
72
Tang Stu4in 23--24 (200s-06)
Untouched by wind and rain,

secure as the mountains.
Alas!
To see such a house tower up
before my eyes
I would that my dwelling
alone were wrecked and
I frozen to death.
The ease with which Du Fu can shift his self-image between

the roles of comic scapegoat and tragic martyr is perhaps the best
evidence that the two characterizations share a common impulse.
By calling attention to his misfortune, Du Fu lessens the indignity
of his aged impotence in the face of bullying; by willing his own
martyrdom, he redresses the indignity of his poverty. The genius of
Du Fu's humor lies, in part, in his ability to subtly elevate himselfby
appearing at once laughable, pitiable, and yet pitying of others-to
convey empathy, as it were, through comedy.
"To SERVE MY SOVEREIGN, I AM WILLING TO EXHAUST MY FEEBLE

STRENGTH"
Du Fu's high stature among the Tang poets derives not least
from the convincing image he projects of himself as a loyal and
conscientious .subject to the Emperor during a time of turmoil.
Our survey of Du Fu's humor is therefore incomplete without an
examination of how it relates to Du Fu's public servant (or, more
often, aspiring public servant) persona. Perhaps the most famous
aniculation of Du Fu's abiding concern for the empire is "Spring
Gazing" (Chunwang fi~), written in 757 in rebel-occupied
Chang'an:
Nation shattered, mountains and rivers

remain,
City in springtime, grasses and trees
grow thick.
73
Rra: .•, Envy You Your Nnu u~/h ana Hair·
The times move me, Rowers draw forth

tears,
I loathe to part, birds startle my heart. m~IJ~_JL}
Beacon fires alight for three months :tf1<iI.=.~
straight,
And a letter from home is worth a
fortune in gold.
White hairs thinned from scratching,

Soon not even enough to hold up a
hatpin.
As this poem has already received extensive treatment in

existing scholarship, here I will just comment briefly on the comic
tropes of hair and the hatpin, and note how the humor of the final
couplet informs the "disjoint structure"52 that is one of Du Fu's
hallmarks. Whereas the first three couplets are syntactically parallel,
the last two lines of the poem break this finely-wrought symmetry.
The image of the head-scratching poet appears as sudden and
incongruous, adding a tragicomic touch to the conventional trope
of the civil servant (a role symbolized by the hatpin, which holds
in place the official's cap) "moved by the times to worry about his
country's fate" (ganshi youguo ~~~~).53
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the poems Du Fu wrote
around the time of his capture make reference to the fact that his
hair has gone white.54 The theme of the balding poet in "Spring
Gazing" recalls, for instance, the second couplet in "Double Ninth
at Mr. Cui's Estate in Lantian," discussed above, which Du Fu
wrote the same year:
'l~ Chou, R~considering Tu Fu, 1 16.
H Owen has also written of tragicomedy as one of Du Fu's hallmarks: "Tu Fu was
one of the first Chinese poets to discover the energy of tragicomedy, and in the
conjunction of its antithetical impulses, there appears yet another asPeCt of the
multiplicity that informs Tu Fu's work" (1he Great Age o/Chinese Poetry, 194).
S4 Chen Yixin counts no fewer than eight from this period (Du Fu pingzhuan,
1:392).
74
Tang StuJin 23-24 (2005-06)
Though afraid my hat might be

blown off my balding head,
I would scorn to ask a companion
to straighten my cap for me.
While both poems link a symbol of aging-short hair (duanfiz

~~) or thinning (duan ~) white hair (baitou 8 m1)-to a symbol
of civil serviee-a cap (mao m, guan 1ff) or hatpin (zan fi)-
they develop this common theme to different affective impact.

Whereas "Double Ninth" expresses Du Fu's emotional reaction to
events through his "embarrassment" (xiu If) and his self-ironic
"scorning" (xiao ~) of an easy cover-up, "Spring Gazing" remains
more affecting for what it leaves unsaid. In the former, Du Fu tells
us he is embarrassed by his old age, but in the latter he actually
shows us that his worry is causing him to age.
The difference is underscored structurally. The second
couplet in "Double Ninth" contains its own comic arc in which
Du Fu presents his problem, but then rejects the unexpected and
ingenious solution even as he brings it up. He admits that he is too
proud to cave in to his fear of embarrassment, and in acknowledging
the self-contradictory nature of his emotions he displays a wry
self-knowledge that temporarily lessens the gravity of the poet's
consciousness of his own mortality. In "Spring Gazing," the abrupt
appearance of the poet scratching his head distracts from the
ominous and depressing scene that precedes it, but the time marker
"soon" (yu ~) in the final line provides a somber reminder that his
decline will continue. The concluding image of the balding poet
in "Spring Gazing" serves to personalize and humanize a grander
narrative: the downfall of the state is underscored by the poet's own
decline, the latter hastened by worries over the former. Combining
"humorous understatement with theatrical exaggeration ,"55 the
final couplet leaves behind a lingering affective resonance.
55Henry W. Wells, Traditional Chin~seHumor: A Study in Art and Literature

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 82-83.
75
Du Fu repeatedly explores the dialectic betwccn the physical
and mental limitations of old age and his concern for the state or
his frustrated desire to serve his sovereign. In the third poem in
"Springtime in the River Village: Five Poems" (Chunri jiangcun
wu shou fj: BiIf1li1tf), dated to the early 760s, for example, Du
Fu again cites his old age in response to an official appointment:
A red writing brush came with the royal

decree;
A silver seal was given to this old man.
Who could have imagined that a man
whose teeth have fallen out
Would find his name listed among the
recommended worthies?
McCraw writes of this passage that here "Du Fu's thoughts

turn explicitly to politics, to tokens of his court appointment
that now seem incongruous on an 'aging gaffer. '"S6 Qing Dynasty
poet and critic Yang Lun flfffif (1747-1803) records a somewhat
apologetic remark by Pu Qilong ?m~ft (1679- ca. 1762) that Du
Fu "composed this couplet to laugh at himself, so there is nothing
to regret in his choice of words."57 In both these poems, Du Fu is
being rather coy about his intentions and abilities. Yet the clear
subtext to his self-characterization is the desperation of a court
willing to employ a man so obviously past his prime.
Du Fu's ambivalence about official service also comes through
in "Twenty Rhymes to Dispel Gloom: Presented to His Excellency
Yan" (Qianmen fengcheng Van Gong ershi yun 1Ir;'t,~~R0 =
+it), which Du Fu wrote for one of his important patrons, Yan
WU M:1E\, who secured him a position in Sichuan as a military
advisor. The opening lines read:
"6 McCraw, Du Fu's Lammts from th~ South, 170.
"7 Yang Lun mfRfl, notes and comm., Du shi jingqUJln tt~.Ji (Shanghai:
Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1998), SS6.
76
Tilnt StwJin 23-24 (2005-06)
Over the shimmering stream, a man

with a fishing rod,
In the clear autumn, an old man
with crane-white hair. SK
Why should I have come to a
commander's tent,
Suited, as I am, only to be in a boat?
The Yellow Register records my

name, as the law provides;
For this green robe too am I indebted
to you.
But myoid wife is concerned about
my rheumatism,
And my little daughters ask about my
headache.
Even on level ground I stumble and fall,
And in court I get into quarrels with
colleagues. 59
This poem perhaps most directly exemplifies Du Fu's lifelong

conflict between his impulses to duty on one hand, and family or
the eremitic ideal on the other. Despite the poem's title, Du Fu's
agenda goes beyond "dispelling gloom." He begins by invoking a
recent, past self: the aging fisherman he was before he was called
to service. Having first cast himself in this light, he expresses
his doubt that he should be an official, claiming that he is only
"suited" for the simple life, a comment that recalls Tao Qian's claim
in the first poem in "Returning to My Farm and Fields to Dwell"
(Gui yuantian ju shi MIllEE'@~) that nothing in his true nature
has ever "chimed with the common" of society or officialdom. By
planting this symbol of rusticity in his poem, Du Fu hints that the
SIIHere Qiu Zhao'ao notes a funny line from one ofYu Xin's ~rn rhapsodies
(Du Fu qUllnji, 965): "See the aged state I'm in: I Crane-white hair and chicken
skin" (f':¥:~ ' .~.El).
59 Translation of lines 7-8 from Hung, Tu Pu, 213.
77
~: -, Envy YDU YDU' Nrw u~lh ana Hai,·
convalescence he seeks is spiritual as well as physical. He thanks

his patron for the opportunity, but then pours out a list of excuses
related to health and temperament. In the fourth couplet, Du Fu
imagines his family caring for and worrying about him, using a
signature technique of projecting sympathy onto others instead of
directly lamenting his own weaknesses.60 Following the line about
his colleagues, he affirms that "To serve my sovereign, I am willing
to exhaust my feeble strength" (1I1:t!t1J8;t); at the end of the
poem he requests frequent leave from his patron. As always, he

will do what he can, but he solicits understanding of his pitiful
condition.
Du Fu expresses a more acute awareness of both the court's
dire need for men of talent and his own limitations in the closing
stanza of "Thatched Hut" (Caotang 1¥i1it), which he wrote in 762
during his Sichuan years:
In a world that has yet to find peace,

Strapping men trump worn-out
scholars.
In an uncertain realm of wind-blown
dust,
What place is there for an old man like
me?
I now see myself for the wart that I am;
But the marrow in my bones has not
yet dried.
As nourishment for the pitiful
remainder of my life,
I shall eat bracken, and be content.61
60Other notable examples of this gesture occur in "Aging Farewell" and "Drunk,
I Fell off my Horse; Friends Came to See Me, Bringing Wine" (Zui wei mazhui
zhugong xiejiu xiangkan M~,~~~~.~f§~).
(,1"Eating bracken" (shiwei *~,

"wild ~eas," y'e wandou !f~R)
glossed in Hanyu ria cidian ilm*l$~
is a common Tang poetic trope for enduring
as
hardship, which alludes to the story of the Shang Dynasty loyalists Boyi 1B~
and Shuqi ;f.X~, who starved in the mountains rather than "eat. the grain of
78
Tant StwJin 23-24 (2005-06)
Compared to the relatively gentle tone of "Twenty Rhymes

to Dispel Gloom," this stanza is striking for its vivid use of corporeal
metaphors. Du Fu's ineffectualness is emphasized in the poem's
structure: the self-mocking epithets "worn-out scholars" ifuru !fit
m), "old man" (140ft ~~), and "wart" (youzhui re1f, which
figuratively refers to anything superfluous or useless) appear in the
passive position at the end of each line. In each case, the symbol of
self is acted upon: soldiers "trump" (shmg 00) worn-out scholars;
the old man mayor may not "be placed" (zhi II); and the wart is
"acknowledged" or "recognized" (jian ~) for what it is. Still, at this
point in Du Fu's life there is still lingering vitality ("the marrow in
my bones has not yet dried") and, as the reference to Boyi f8~
and Shuqi ;J&~ in the last line suggests, the possibility of at least
enjoying the moral satisfaction of having stayed true to his loyalist
conscience.
For all his valiant attempts at mind over matter, however,
Du Fu was never satisfied that he had done right by his sovereign.
Again and again he takes himself to task for having not lived up to
his potential, often in harsh and unsparing terms. In the following
final two examples, we see Du Fu's self-mockery at its most bitterly
precise. These poems chronicle not only Du Fu's attempts to act on
his enduring concern for the state, but also the toll it took on his
physical and spiritual well-being. He tells of his disgust with the
slights and indignities suffered during the humiliating searches for
patronage necessary to sustain him during his interminable waits
Zhou." The language and themes of "Thatched Hut" bear comparison to the
opening lines of "Bidding Farewell in Old Age" (Chuilao bie ~ ~ ~IJ, lines 1-8
of 24, my translation):
The four districts have not yet found peace;

As I grow older, I enjoy no rest.
With all my offspring perished,
How can I survive by this body alone?
I cast aside my cane and walk outside,
Bitter experience my companion.
Fortunately, I have a few teeth left,
I lament only the withering of this frail body.
79
Rr-a: -, Envy You You, N~ ut'lh and Hai,·
for an official appointment. Animal imagery and associations, such

as those found in "Twenty-two Rhymes Presented to Assistant
Secretary of the Left Wei" (Fengzcng Wei Zuochengzhang ershi' er
+
yun ¥"tl#ti.?iS J:.= =fm), convey the degradation of these
experiences.62
In this long poem, which Du Fu wrote around 749 while
seeking employment in Chang' an, he expresses the frustrations of
his years of seeking patronage in the capital while at the same time
appealing to the poem's recipient for assistance. To succeed, Du

Fu must preserve his authenticity by conveying his true feelings
and convictions, but also come across as worthy of Secretary Wei's
consideration. To do so, he structures the poem to follow an arc
from the brash ambitions and inflated self-regard of a young man
to the disappointments he currently faces and his intention to seek
greener pastures elsewhere.
This is a poem of extremes, cascading from soaring bravado
(U My reading surpassed ten thousand volumes I My writing flowed
as if with divine inspiration" -gw_~M~ ' T~~Df[~) to an
unsentimental account of the true material challenges he faced in
the capital. Of the latter, he writes in a middle stanza:
Astride a donkey for more than three

years,
I take what there is to eat in the
springtime capital,
Mornings rapping at some rich
fellow's gate,
Evenings trailing the dust of his fat
horses.
Wine dregs, a bit of cold roast, ~ff~~~
And everywhere I bear this sorrow in ¥U~M~~
silence.
In response to His Majesty's recent
summons,
61 For the full text of this poem, see Yang Lun, Dushi jingquan, 24-25.
80
Tang StuJin 23-24 (200S-06)
I jumped in the hopes of extending

my services.
I could have soared through the blue
sky but my wings were folded;63
I was trapped, a fish unable to swim.64
Having already described his earlier brimming self-confidence,

in this section Du Fu undermines his own boasting. He tells how he

has found himself humbled: reduced to riding around on a donkey
(no doubt he is too poor to afford a horse) and chasing potential
benefactors who ride around the capital on "fat horses," who we
are led to believe are better fed than the poet himsel£ His lifelong
quest for patronage has turned him into a forager who must take
the scraps he can get. The implicit comparison between the poet
and the "fat horses" is superseded below by a pair of animalistic
synecdoche that articulate the shame and impotence he experiences
as a result of his failure in the Emperor's special civil service exam
in 747. As a bird whose "wings were folded" and a fish "unable
to swim," Du Fu casts himself as a victim of fate. The allusion
to frustrated hopes suggests the betrayal he felt when he and his
fellow examination candidates were summarily failed by a prime
minister. Following this disappointment, Du Fu never again sat for
the examinations.
The final stanza reiterates the poet's gratitude: how he has
been "shamed" by Secretary Wei's generosity and how he "knows
well" that Wei is a man of sincerity (g:1*X:A.,lJ , g:~ 1:.A
~). 65 The poem ends by noting that he will soon be turning away
63 Interpreting qingming 1f~ as "douds," following note cited in Qiu, Du Fu

quanji,66.
64 Excerpt is of lines 19-28. Translation of lines 19-24 adapted from Watson,
The Selected Ponns of Du Fu, 5-6; translation of lines 25-28 from Hung, Tu Fu,
56. Following William Hung's interpretation (Tu Fu, 55), translation of line 19
modified from "Thirty years astride a donkey" and samhi zai .=.
+lX changed
(0 san si zai .=.
[g~.
65 Both Qin Zhao'ao and the Ming dynasty critic Wang Sishi J:.1f8Pl~, author of
81
from public life and towards the Eastern Seas, the Zhongnan Hills,
and ~the banks of the clear Wei." He faces his imminent depanure
with reluctance, since it will mean taking leave of a good friend:
()ften have I hoped to repay you for that

one meal;
Harder still has it been to forget when I
last parted from Your Excellency.
A white gull vanishes in the vast expanse; 8M&~lI

Who can tame him from afar? M.m.~ffg~1I
The poet as a lonely gull appears again as a response to failed

ambitions in literature and government service in poems from
much later in Du Fu's life, such as "Traveling at Night, Writing My
Thoughts" (Luye shuhuai 1*1Q8tf!, ca. 764-765). In this poem,
however, the sublime image serves an additional purpose besides
symbolizing the poet's lofty detachment from worldly affairs. After
reiterating his gratitude toward his patron, Du Fu hints at the
possibility that he might "lose" Du Fu if he does not act-a blatant
request for patronage.
The tone of this early poem stands in sharp contrast to
the sentiments expressed in some of Du Fu's "late" poetry. Like
"Twenty-two Rhymes," "Speaking My Cares on an Autumn Day
in Jingnan: Thirty Rhymes" (Qiuri Jingnan shuhuai sanshi yun
fk B Hi1l¥J~tI-=:. +mt,768) makes use of animal associations to
convey the dehumanizing experience of the quest for patronage.
The bitterness of this poem is more typical of Du Fu's expressive
poems (typically marked as shuhuai ~tJ or yonghuai ~1!l). In
this poem, when Du Fu complains that he is "Sick of wagging my
food-begging tail / Ever exposing my boon-requiting chops" Ci5=f£
*it ~, 1¥;BJ¥&J~Jl~,),66 the effect is to "collapse the human and
Du yi filW, explain the extravagance of both the boasting and the flattery in this
poem as a function of Ou Fu treating Secretary Wei as a "true friend," or zhijiro
c. Qiu, Du Fu quanji, 64, 66.
6(, McCraw, Du Fus lAments from the South, 49.
82
TanK Stwiin 23-24 (200S-06)
(he animal search for sustenance to the point where the value of
requiting generosity, baom ff,L~, an essential practice of Chinese
society, is itself degraded."67 In both poems, the self-mockery is a
self-corrective gesture, a sardonic expression of the poet's realization
(hat he has overestimated himsel£ "Speaking My Cares," however,
is replete with expressions of shame (kui tl), resentment (yuanhtn
~m), sorrow (ai jl), and worry (chou ~). Like "Clear Evening,"
discussed in the first section, "Speaking My Cares" closes with the:

metaphor of dying embers (sihui 9E11<), creating a much grimmer
mood overall.
CoNCLUSION
In this essay I have argued that humor is an important

component of Du Fu's self-representation because it conveys a self-
awareness in which we recognize the human. Du Fu appears to us
in his poems as a man forever caught between personal, societal,
and national crises. Through his varied self-representations, Du
Fu repeatedly engages with two interrelated questions. One is the
practical and moral question of how the individual should respond
to adversity-be it his own hunger and poverty or such trans-
subjective problems as social suffering and political turmoil. The
other is a question that faces all would-be poetic autobiographers:
how to give an account of oneself? In many poems, Du Fu's surprise
answer to both questions is: "With humor." McCraw perceptively
notes that "so often when he is backed into a desperate corner, Du
Fu manages a wry joke at his own expense."68 Yet, as the above
examples have demonstrated, humor and self-mockery served Du
Fu as more than just survivalist modes for negotiating moments
of material or existential crisis. They also helped create his poetic
personae as an aging man, a voice of social conscience, and a loyal
subject.
67 My thanks to an anonymous reviewer at Tang Studies for sharing this

observation.
68 McCraw, Du Fus Lammts from the South, 176.
83
This survey would be incomplete without mention of what
is undoubtedly the most elaborate instance of self-mockery in Du
Fu's entire corpus: "Drunk, I Fell Off My Horse; Friends Came to
Sec Me, Bringing Wine" (Zui wei mazhui zhugong xiejiu xiangkan
M~.~~M;0t1~ffitf). By way of conclusion, I would like
to touch brieRy on how this heptaSyllabic poem in ancient-style,
which Du Fu wrote in 765 in Kuimou, brings together many of
the overarching patterns in Du Fu's use of humor and self mockery
that we have examined in this essay. Burton Watson's translation

reads:
Du Fu, aging guest of the governor, m1!1~f~~-$

Done drinking, singing songs, fm7@mt!fX*i~~
brandishing a golden halberd,
Mounted his horse and suddenly
recalled his younger days,
Set the horse's hoofs Rying,
scattering Qutang stones;
From White Emperor City,
beyond river clouds,
Hunched in the saddle, plunged
eight thousand feet straight
down.
White-daubed walls pass like
lightning, purple reins slack,
East till I gain the level hills,
emerge from soaring cliffs.
River hamlets, country houses,
vie to be first in my sight;
Holding back the whip, easing
the bit, I reach the open
highroad.
White-haired perhaps, but still
able to astound the populace,
Remembering how well in my
youth I could ride and shoot-
84
Til", Stwiin 23-24 (200~)
How did I know that this fleet- ~~lj(J)lmJi\JE

footed mount, racing at
such speed,
Red with sweat, straining breath *ff~_ttuJ3i
out gobs of froth,
Would unexpectedly stumble and /f_-_~fftil
land me in a nasty spill?
In life, get too carried away and Ai:.'~~~pJT~
you meet much shame!

That's my chief sorrow as I lie on lflft,*§~~~tt
these quilts and pillows,
Plus the added ills and discomforts i5t71~_:tJD~Ji{JE
of old age.
Friends come to inquire. Brazen Jlij~*r~'M4fXMi
as I am,
With goosefoot cane I force ttfJ~!i~*{j~
myself to sit up, a servant to
lean on;
Then, explanations over, we open mailpxrmD~
our mouths and give a big
laugh.69
They take my hand, sweep a special mJ*5iUtfflmt~EtB
place by a bend of the clear
stream;
Wine and meat heaped in ?W ~ ~DL1.J Y.. ~ IF.¥
mountains--off we go again!
As the feast begins, sad strings, fJJ~:a~IJJJftJ
huge flutes sounding,
Together we point at the westering ~miffi B /ffl3:W
sun-won't be with us much
longer!
Amid much clamor, we drain our lr§:lJif !illffep5~
cups of filtered wine.
69 Here Qiu Zhao'ao notes (Du Fu qwz.nji, 1305) the Zhwz.ngzi's prescription
that "One should not laugh out loud more than four or five days per month"
(ffflDjffi~ ' -~Z~ ':f~I2!J1iB).
85
Ra: -, Envy You You, Nt1II Tr~thand Hai,·
But why race your horse, coming

to ask after me?
Did you not see:
Xi Kang, that nourisher of life,
got himself executed. 7()
Through a series of abrupt changes in tenor and focus, this

single poem interweaves many of the overarching patterns we have
seen in Du Fu's other humorous self-portrayals. We see the aged

Du Fu make a drunken spectacle in a vain attempt to relive his
youth, as he did in "Drunken Song Presented to District Defender
Van the Tenth." We see the stubbornness in the face of physical
decline that he was to reassert two years later in "Returning Home
at Night." We see the forced and genuine mirth of outing poems
like "Double Ninth at Mr. Cui's Estate in Lantian" (though in this
innovation Du Fu surveys the landscape from horseback rather
than from mountaintop), as well as his fervor in testifying to his
friends' generosity. We see in this poem the towering audacity and
hyperbolic imagery of "Twenty-two Rhymes Presented to Secretary
of the Left Wei," as well as the humorous realism and situational
comedy of "Northern Journey" or "Qiang Village." Within these
overlapping affective registers, we also find several spectacular
displays of mock heroism, and, in the final flourish, the sort of
ironic self-comparison to the ancients found in "Departing Tonggu
Districr." Throughout, we are not just seeing Du Fu; we are seeing
him see himself through a humorous gaze that we recognize as
integral to his humanity.
Even amidst the gripping momentum of a poem as robustly
humorous as "Drunk, I Fell Off My Horse," moments of somber
-0 Watson, the Selected Poems of Du Fu, 143-44. Watson's note on the 6nalline
of the poem reads: "The poet Xi Kang (223-262) is famous for his philosophical
essays, among them one on 'Nourishing Life.' Embroiled in a court quarrel,
he was arrested, slandered, and condemned to execution. Ou Fu ends his poem
merely by pointing out this irony, but the implication dearly is: 'Though I may
be poor at "nourishing life"-witness my fall from a horse-I don't go so far as
to get myself killed. '"
86
Tang StuJin 23-24 (2005-06)
reflection remind us that none of Du Fu's poems come close to

unalloyed comedy. As Du Fu is at the peak of his glory, imagining
himself being watched by a crowd of awed spectators, disaster
strikes, bringing home the moral that "extreme joy produces
sorrow" (kji shmgb~i ~ti~~). To be sure, Du Fu's self-mockery
is a corrective gesture by which he checks his flights of fancy and
reminds himself of his limitations; yet it also reveals most acutely
his sympathetic awareness of the eternal gap between human
ambitions and human accomplishments. We have seen that while

Du Fu sometimes blames his misfortunes on fate, he is most
inclined to directly blame himself for his failures, and that, though
he sometimes reflects on his youthful folly from an older, wiser
perspective, the self-knowledge imparted by old age more often
leads him to credit himself with being an aged fool. We must read
between the lines to recognize the humorous tolerance that often
tempers these self-reproaches.
Writing within a literary tradition that had long placed
great value on the ability to endure hardship and struggle against
overwhelming odds, Du Fu wanted his readers to know that he was
loath to accept poverty, hunger, physical weakness, or death without
a fight. His copious laments about poverty, aging, and general
misfortune project a pitiful image of him and his family, yet rarely
does he wallow in his misery. We see that his ability to laugh at his
own misfortune is a virtue in itself because it bespeaks the vitality
of the human spirit in the face of life's hardships. Confronted with
an intractable reality, his self-mocking laughter signified both his
recognition of his own helplessness and his determination to make
an affirmative gesture nonetheless.
Du Fu's acts of "humoring" himself thus serve dual functions:
they both encourage us to condone his shortcomings (as he himself
has done) and affirm his own humanity through the use of humor.
Humor and self-mockery, as strategies of self-presentation, are also
closely tied to the issue of authenticity-"autobiography's first
concern," in Owen's words.71 By laughing at his own foolishness
7\ Owen, 1h~ Vitality of the Lyric voice, 74. Intimately related to the issue of
87
or decrepitude, the poet demonstrates the detached self-awareness
that assures us he is a genuine human being who is telling the truth
about himself.
Humor and self-mockery allow Du Fu to enact a curious
self-transformation, revealing aspects of his physical and emotional
condition-poverty, hunger, pride, failed ambition-that the social
conventions of his day might consider shameful or embarrassing.
Yet Du Fu's very act of revealing these failings or weaknesses
testifies to a self-awareness in which we observe a recognizable

humanity. If he is a fool, as Du Fu repeatedly claims of himself, his
foolishness serves as proof of his authenticity, for fools are nothing
if not sincere. At the same time, Du Fu's claim of foolishness itself
indicates a level of self-awareness that renders his claim suspect,
since the "fool" is wise enough to recognize and seek to correct his
own folly. By making fun of himself, he brings us into an open
confidence.
It bears repeating too that Du Fu's use of humor and self-
mockery vary with contextual factors, such as when a poem was
written, what its theme was, and whether or not it was addressed
to a recipient. In poems addressed to a friend or patron, he speaks
of his age and faults in frank terms, and flatters his reader as the
occasion requires. Even in poems presumably geared toward a
benefactor's interests, the poet tends to end up center stage, which
reminds us that in making fun of himself he is also enacting a
performance. Looking at Du Fu's oeuvre as a whole, the humor
in his poems from the Kuizhou years and later tends to be more
bitter and harshly self-critical than that of poems written between
Chang'an and the Thatched Hut period. "Drunk, I Fell Off My
Horse," is of course the notable exception to this pattern.
For modern readers accustomed to psychological complexity
in literature, the humorous self-representations scattered throughout
Du Fu's corpus allow a point of entry into the psyche of a poet who
authenticity is that of sincerity, which Eva Shan Chou says became "the
rationale for holding Du Fu unique" among traditional Chinese literary critics
(Reconsidering Tu Fu, 197).
88
Til"g StJuijn 23-24 (200)-06)
went to great lengths to paint a sorry picture of himself: Should Du

Fu strike us as an appealing rather than merely sympathetic figure,
it is thanks in no small pan to the self-awareness we detect in his
ability to find humor in hardship and his inclination to laugh at
his own shortcomings. It is this virtue that ensures that Du Fu's
"Empty Purse" (Kongrang ~II), poetically speaking, is not so
empty after all:
Fruit from the azure oak, bitter but

edible,
Dawn's rosy clouds, on high, can yet
serve as my meal.
Men of the age have all acted recklessly, t!tA~~#
And my road has been one of hardship. ~mlllRll
Nothing on the stove, the well at dawn 1'11#_,*
frozen,
No coat to cover me, my bed cold at
night;
But an empty purse is an embarrassment
I dread,
So I keep one coin in it to look at.72
72 Translation of lines 1 and 5 from Watson, 1h~&keud Pomzs of Du Pu, 62.

See also Owen's translation and analysis of this poem in 1h~ Vitality of th~ Lyric
voic~, 88-93. The second line in the text that Owen cites reads .~~OJ.;
my adaptation follows the version in Du Fu qUllnji, 510. This poem is dated to
758, when Du Fu was about forty-six years old. This is one of the few Du Fu
poems for which traditional commentators specifically remark on self-mockery.
Qiu Zhao'ao notes that "in the final couplet he cracks a joke at his own expense"
and reads the poem overall as a testimony to the poet's ability to find peace
in his own hardships: "the empty purse signifies that he has made peace with
his poverty" (Du Fu qUllnji, 510). Pu Qilong ?m~ft also observes that, "As
a whole, the poem is filled with self-mocking language. One popular saying
jocularly refers to people who do not eat as 'elevated immortals.' The opening
couplet expresses this meaning. Lines three and four explain why, but his moral
elevation is already evident from his citation of Zhuangzi. Lines five and six tell
of his actual circumstances, while the last couplet makes light of them" (Du Du
xinji~ .t±/L\~, 2 vols. [Taipei: Datong shuju, 1974], 1:399).
89

"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor, Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic Self-Image

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Tang Studies

ISSN: 0737-5034 (Print) 1759-7633 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ytng20

"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor,

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/tng.2005.2005.23-24.47

Published online: 19 Jul 2013.

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"I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair":

Du Fu fJ:-m (712-770) was not the first Tang poet to be

I Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginningr to 1911 (New

3 William Hung, Tu Fu: Chinas Greatest Poet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

between Du Fu's humor and his character or poetic an. David

The High Tang, refers several times to Du Fu's "half-humorous"

HUMOR AND SELF-MOCKERY AS PoETIC MODES

Discussions of humor are sometimes hamstrung by humor's

University Press, 1952), vii.

4David R. McCraw, Du Fus lAments from the South (Honolulu: University of

7Stephen Owen, "The Selrs Perfect Mirror: Poetry as Autobiography," in The

a tricky phenomenon to analyze in literature. What one reader

Commentaries and annotations by poetry critics from the dynas~ic

then, did Du Fu find laughable about himself? What language and

Fu's humorous self-representations changed from one period of his

"THOUGH WHITE-HFADED AND OlD, I DANCE AND SING"

Du Fu's self-mockery are the physical and psychological effects

10 These four terms appear approximately seventy-eight times throughout Du

Did you not see: ~~J!

In "Cloudy Again" the insertion of the short line "Did you

IIPoem datings follow notes by the Song dynasty commentator Huang He Ii

13 Reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations (MC) based on William H.

14 Du Fu refers to "white hair" in his poems at least seventy-three times.

Leaning on my cane. Ican board the

Another recurring trope for old-age infirmity is deafness,

Stupid, dull, and full of maladies,

1 ~ The latter appears in the opening couplet of "Twenty Rhymes to Dispel

These couplets point to two panems in how Du Fu constructS

what they want to say to him). Second. Du Fu often conveys old

17 The commentator 1t*.~.1:t±~

only in his mid-fonics when he wrote this poem, his sentiments

In myoid age autumn makes me

today so that we may enjoy

The arrival of the Double Ninth holiday finds the poet

19 This point is made inJin Shengtan ~~., DuFushixuan ttm~iB (Tainan:

Ninth outing to Dragon Mountain. A gust of wind blew Meng

20 Qiu, Du Fu qU4nji, 405; "Biography ofMengjia," fin shu, 98.2580-81.

22 Taking ~ as wei (i.e., in qushmg ~.; to assist, or to do something on

(0 ask someone to do something on one's behalf: With respect

which he also "exposes" his motive-a fear of embarrassment-but

2.~ Xu, Shuo 1ilng shi, 432.

more elevated figure.

Through rites and music I work on my shortcomings, m~1.JJ~~

(00 straightforward to be humorous. In the opening couplets of

With you, my elder brother, I have

The contrast is black and white: Du Fu, as "younger brother,"

Since childhood I have been lazy

Having reproached himself twice for habitual laziness (Ian

My ears warmed by wine, I forget

Moved by your generosity, I have

As in the previous poem, Du Fu is addressing a friend and

thinks of his younger friend and feels old; here a fifty-six-year-

White-haired and old I may be,

758, in which Du Fu likens his peripatetic lifestyle to that of