Men of letters in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, like visiting the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum, the sacred land of Chinese literature where they can sense the aroma of poetry.

The 3rd Du Fu Thatched Cottage Orchid Exhibition is being held in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province.

At this time of year, however, they say they can feel the aroma of orchids in the museum’s orchid garden as the 10-day 3rd Du Fu Thatched Cottage Orchid Exhibition is being held.

The exhibition which kicked off on August 15 has drawn orchids from the Zhongshan Park in North China’s Beijing, Lingering Garden in Suzhou, East China’s Jiangsu province, the People’s Park in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong province, and the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum.

An orchid is on display in the orchid garden of the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province.

Although the exhibition ends on August 24, visitors can still see the museum’s own orchids in its orchid garden after the date, according to Ma Hong, deputy museum curator.

Visitors flock to the orchid garden of the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, to admire orchids.

The orchid garden which is known nationwide was set up in the late 1950s. It is so named because of Marshal Zhu De (1886-1976) who donated orchids to the museum.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the marshal who loved orchids visited the museum five times and donated more than 160 pots of precious orchids to it.

The 20-hectare Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum is located around the location where Du Fu (712-770), one of China's most luminary poets, built his family cottage in 760 with the help of his friend, the official Yan Wu.

Du was a native of Gongxian in Central China’s Henan province, who endured great hardships to move to Chengdu in 759, via Northwest China’s Gansu province, as a refugee of an eight-year war started by two rebel generals in 755.

The poet found peace in the Chengdu cottage for three years and nine months, penning 240 of his existing 1,455 poems.

University students from Beijing and Shanghai admire Du Fu’s poems inscribed in the Flower-bathing Brook Park adjacent to the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province.

His poem Good Rain on a Spring Night, written in 761, is prescribed reading for Chinese students.

The merry poem reads:

A good rain falling

Just when it should

In springtime; riding

On the wind it fills

A whole night, soaking

The land with its goodness.

Inside the museum are bronze statues depicting the happy scene described in the poem. Visitors are so attracted to the statue of Du's son, captured in a pose of holding rain with cupped hands, that they touch the boy's bronze fingers. Because so many people have done this, his hands shine like polished brass.

Despite his relatively happy days in the cottage, after a storm destroyed the cottage roof in 761, the poet known for his compassionate portrayals of human suffering, and indignation in the face of injustice and corruption, pondered the fate of other impoverished scholars, writing the famous poem Song of the Autumn Wind and the Thatched Cottage, declaring he could die content in his rustic abode if the less fortunate found shelter.

The museum which abounds in lush forests and flowers in all four seasons provides an ideal vista all year round.

A replica of Du's cottage was built in 1997 in line with the description in his poems.

The replica of Du Fu's cottage built in 1997 in line with the description in his poems is a landmark of Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province.

Famous Chinese architect and painter Liu Weibing says the cottage resembles Linpan, the traditional thatched-roofed houses of Sichuan’s farmers set amid bamboo forests and next to streams. Such dwellings have existed in the area for about 4,700 years.

Liu Weibing

Liu, who grew up among such dwellings and associates them with a slower pace of life, had a book entitled Linpan published by the Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House in 2016.

In 2012, Liu’s design for the reconstruction of two mountainous villages in Dujiangyan damaged in Sichuan's Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 won the Global Human Settlements Planning and Design Award at the Global Forum on Human Settlements held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, because of the incorporation of Linpan in his design.