A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

Tang Dynasty.

Several peddlers and laborers sat around the tea stall, looking up at the sky.

Through these several instances of the celestial screens, they pieced together a story about Du Fu, the poet who wrote poems for them.

An old man selling charcoal put down his bowl and stared blankly at the sky.

He spent his entire life as a lowly charcoal maker, enduring reprimands from officials, beatings from the village head, and exploitation from market clerks.

I never imagined that someone would actually write down their suffering in words, put it on paper, and let future generations see it.

He asked the person next to him, "Where is this Du Fu?"

Everyone was silently watching the sky; no one answered him.

Tianmu recounted how Du Fu fled amidst the flames of war and watched his young son starve to death in their home in Fengxian County.

Now they're talking about his poverty in his later years.

The old man selling charcoal stood up.

"He suffers so much himself?" he murmured. "His own children starved to death, and he still writes about us?"

A woman washing clothes nearby covered her mouth.

"Where is he now?" the woman asked softly. "Skyfall said he was on a wrecked boat. Is he still there?"

Nobody knows the answer.

The old man selling charcoal suddenly took a dry cake from his charcoal basket and placed it on the table.

"I don't have anything good," he said in a muffled voice, speaking to the old man in the sky who was no longer there. "Just this one piece of bread. If you were still here, I would have sent it to you."

The woman washing clothes took two eggs out of her basket and gently placed them next to the dry bread.

An old soldier with a limp walked over, took out a few copper coins from his satchel, and placed them next to the eggs.

"He wrote that the old woman was taken away by the officials to cook, and my mother was taken away in the same way."

Copper coins, eggs, and dry biscuits.

These odds and ends piled on the table resembled a small, humble altar.

The old charcoal seller looked at the "altar" and suddenly cursed.

"God is blind, good people have to live like this."

He raised his rough palm and vigorously wiped his face.

"If he comes here, I'll make charcoal for him, for free."

-

The voice on the sky, seemingly wanting to speak but gentle, asked a question.

Which line from Du Fu's poetry collection is your favorite or most memorable?

(Leave your favorite poem!)

The comments section erupted with responses.

[Of course it's the saying "Behind the red gates, meat and wine go to waste, while on the road, frozen corpses lie." It gave me goosebumps the first time I read it.]

"I will climb to the summit and survey all the mountains below!" Sorry, my style is off, but this is truly my favorite line.

[War raged for three months, a letter from home was worth a fortune; I cried while reading it in a foreign land at night.]

The boundless forest sheds its leaves with a rustling sound; the endless Yangtze River rolls on and on.

"If only I had ten thousand mansions, I could shelter all the poor scholars of the world and make them smile. Even my own thatched hut has been blown away, yet I'm still thinking of others."

[It is indeed a beautiful scene in Jiangnan, and I meet you again in the season of falling flowers. I didn't know the background of the writing before, but I found it very heartwarming.]

"Two orioles sing in the green willows, a line of egrets soars into the blue sky—sorry, Du Fu, this is the only one I remember."

What does it resemble, drifting aimlessly? A lone seagull on the vast天地 (heaven and earth).

"To shoot a man, shoot his horse first; to capture a thief, capture his king first. Who would have thought Old Du could be so ruthless?"

"Having read ten thousand books, one's writing flows like a god's; I know this is what Du Fu was astonished by when he wrote it."

The official's shouts were filled with rage, the woman's cries with bitterness; the entire poem about the official of Shihao is a knife.

……

Unable to see the comments, she continued speaking at her own pace, "I like many things, but the one that impressed me the most is 'Great writers are often the ones who fail to achieve success.'"

"This is a summary: Du Fu observed that those who write well seem to have bad luck, while those whose lives are too smooth cannot write well."

He sighed softly, unable to speak further.

"Great talents are often hated by those who achieve success. Du Fu, how did you come to this conclusion?"

Was it the ten years of confinement in Chang'an that allowed you to see the stench of wine and meat in the mansions of the rich and the hardships of the poor?

Was it that cold winter in Fengxian County, when you opened the door and saw your infant son starving to death in his swaddling clothes?

Was it the flames of the An Lushan Rebellion that allowed you to witness firsthand the transformation of a prosperous capital into scorched earth, and the displacement of countless people?

Or was it when you heard that Li Bai had been exiled to Yelang, that the once radiant immortal now destined to spend his remaining days in a desolate land?

A talented person is often destined for greatness!

Du Fu, standing beneath the sky, almost shed tears.

He knew all too well the weight of those five words.

This is the truth he gained through a lifetime of wandering and hardship, the conclusion he reached after watching his talented friends struggle in the mire of fate.

He would rather never be able to write such a sentence.

He would rather Li Bai were still drinking and composing poetry in the taverns of Chang'an, he would rather he himself was still expressing his lofty sentiments of "looking down on all the mountains from the bottom of the sky" at the foot of Mount Tai, and he would rather the Tang Dynasty, which once had all nations paying tribute, be forever prosperous and strong.

If he could exchange all his talent for a peaceful and prosperous era, for Li Bai's safety, he would not hesitate to break the pen in his hand.

The greatest poems are born from the deepest suffering.

The unspoken words on the sky never ceased.

"If Du Fu had been better off, if he had passed the imperial examinations, become a high-ranking official, and enjoyed his later years in peace and prosperity, would we still be reading 'Behind the red gates, meat and wine go to waste, while on the road, frozen corpses lie'? Would we still be reading 'If only I had ten thousand mansions, I could shelter all the poor scholars of the world and make them smile'?"

She paused for a moment.

"This is a cruel question. It seems to suggest that the poet's suffering is literature's good fortune, but that's not what I'm trying to say."

"What I'm saying is that 'literature hates success' is not Du Fu praising suffering. He had no choice but to endure it, record it, and let future generations see the whole truth of that era in his poems."

The image that appears in the picture is of Du Fu before his death. He is on a broken boat on the Xiang River, frail and sickly, with paper and pen spread out in front of him.

Outside the window, fallen flowers bloom in the Jiangnan region; inside, a lamp is about to burn out.

His hands were trembling, but he kept writing.

He endured a lifetime of hardship in exchange for a few poems in our textbooks.

But he didn't have to be a poet saint; he could have just been a happy, ordinary person.

……

Why tear open your heart again and again, confront suffering, and record suffering?

There are many Du Fus in the history of our Chinese nation.

Like Du Fu, they possessed clear-headed yet tormented souls, trapped in an era destined to slide into the abyss, powerless to change it.

But Du Fu's choice, and the choices of similar scholars throughout history, constitute the most tragic spiritual spectrum in Chinese history.

Their way out has never been a simple "what to do," but rather a series of choices fraught with immense tension and pain, caught between "benefiting all under heaven" and "cultivating one's own virtue."

"The path of 'poetic history' written with the pen is the most direct and immortal answer given by Du Fu himself."

When all practical efforts failed, Du Fu chose to 'record' his efforts through poetry.

This is not only for literature, but also a profound historical responsibility.

With works like "The Ballad of the War Chariots" and "The Three Officials and the Three Separations," he left an indelible image of the ordinary people whose faces are blurred in official history, and of that mad era.

The history books we read only focus on emperors, prime ministers, military governors, and eunuchs, attributing the rise and fall of the empire and the success or failure of wars entirely to the decisions, struggles, and good and evil of those in power. The common people are merely background figures, simply disappearing numbers.

Du Fu's record is a fundamental subversion of the narrative of power, turning the blood and tears of the forgotten into historical testimony that can never be erased.

Through his poems, later generations can feel the pulse of that era.

This is the most powerful form of 'change'.

He could not change the times, but he shaped future generations' lasting understanding and memory of that era.

More figures emerge in the scene: Zheng Xuan at the end of the Han Dynasty, compiling classics amidst the chaos of war; and Wang Yinglin at the end of the Song Dynasty, gathering disciples and lecturing during the fall of his kingdom.

"Passing on culture and preserving the flame—this is another path."

Many scholars retreated from the chaos of the times to write books, establish doctrines, and gather students to teach.

They knew that regimes could change, but the lifeline of culture could not be severed.

As long as human ethics and the classics of the ancient kings remain, civilization can be reborn one day.

This is a far-reaching protection that transcends politics, preserving the seeds of spirit for future revival.

Screen switch.

When Wen Tianxiang was captured, the Yuan Dynasty offered him the position of prime minister, but he refused.

"Upholding integrity and illuminating history—this is the third path."

After being captured, Wen Tianxiang remained unmoved by the prospect of becoming prime minister.

Because what he wanted to protect was no longer a certain Song emperor, but the civilized integrity of the "Han Chinese attire" and his own scholarly integrity.

He believes that the victors in reality will ultimately face the judgment of history.

This belief in ultimate historical justice was the most steadfast spiritual pillar for ancient Chinese scholar-officials in dire straits.

He paused slightly, as if he wanted to say something more, and his voice became even more steady and powerful.

What did they actually "change"?

They could not change the fate of the dynasty's demise.

But together they shaped a spirit of perseverance, concern for the country and its people, and selflessness that is deeply ingrained in Chinese civilization.

This tradition forms the backbone of the Chinese people.

Whenever the nation is in peril, there are always those who remember Du Fu's poems and Wen Tianxiang's integrity, and thus step forward to help.

They didn't just change that one era; they changed the collective character of this nation and its long-term future.

"When Du Fu and others faced an era they could not change, their choices formed a three-dimensional spiritual monument. They did not let that dark era succeed, not by preventing it from happening, but by making it impossible to define everything."

History is written by the victors.

She paused.

"But it's not just that."

There will always be someone who uses their own body as ink.