The Au Lushan Rebellion

In a life time, a person laughs, cries, falls in love, and sometimes goes to war. With each new experience, there is a defining moment. Occasionally, these moments are recorded through writing and passed down over several centuries. In literature, several of these works express the experiences of the writer themselves or the effects upon which these experiences had. For writers such as Wang Wei, Li Bo, Du Fu, and Bo Juyi of the Tang Dynasty, these moments are recorded as poems encompassing various styles and experiences. In the early seventh century, one of the most prominent poets was Wang Wei. During Wang Wei’s time and the rest of Tang Dynasty, the most defining moment became the Au Lushan Rebellion. Unlike his contemporaries, Wei did not focus his poems on the Au
With this, Du Fu centered most of his poems around the rebellion and the effects of which the rebellion had on his life. In “Moonlight Night,” Du Fu indirectly tells a love story of two lovers separated by the rebellion with only the moon to connect the two. In the poem, Du Fu expresses his longing for his wife with her “cloud hair” and her “jade arms,” while wondering if the two will ever be together again. Another poem, “Ballad of the Firewood Vendors,” also addresses the effects of the Au Lushan Rebellion. Throughout the poem, Du Fu references the life of the women of Kuizhou. Since the rebellion, many of the women have had difficulties finding husbands, especially the women of forty, fifty, or sixty, and live a life “steeped in bitterness and long sighs.” These women peddle firewood to make ends meet, and they “risk their lives for extra gain by dipping from salt wells.” These women live with “powdered faces” and “heads adorned” in “cramped fields” and “thin clothing.” In other words, these women are living through the ravages of the