One day, Du Fu pestered his aunt to tell stories again. My aunt said:

"Our Du family has produced many famous people. The famous general Du Yu of the Jin Dynasty (for his story, please see the 12th episode of this book) is our thirteenth generation ancestor. He was brave in war. He has made great contributions to the court. The people even made up songs to praise him!"

"It's amazing!" Du Fu said with a thumbs up.

"Your grandfather (Du Shenyan) is a famous poet. The poems he wrote were rewarded by the emperor, and people praised him as a talented man."

These stories gave Du Fu Very encouraging. He studied hard and practiced hard. When he was seven years old, he wrote his first poem "Ode to the Phoenix". One day, he showed his father an article he had written, and two guests happened to be visiting. They also looked interested.

"Such a masterpiece, it looks like it was written by Ban Gu and Yang Xiong (both famous writers in the Han Dynasty)!" the guests said after reading it.

From then on, these two guests often praised Du Fu to people and took him to the homes of people who were proficient in music to listen to the wonderful music of Li Guinian, a famous court musician at the time. This had a great impact on him. Du Fu paid great attention to technique when writing poems throughout his life, and he would never stop thinking about it until his words failed to amaze him.