Du Fu

About Du Fu

Du Fu (712–770 CE) stands as one of the paramount figures in Chinese literary history, often ranked alongside Li Bai as a master of Tang Dynasty poetry. His roughly 1,500 surviving poems provide an unparalleled, visceral account of the An Lushan Rebellion and its devastating impact on the common people and the state. This deep socio-political resonance and enduring artistic quality are why MIT's Pantheon project ranks him highly at #799 in global historical importance.

Despite this profound historical significance, Du Fu's modern internet attention is considerably low. He garnered only 83K annualized Wikipedia views in 2025, placing him in an **Attention Gap** category of being underattended by a factor of -4x relative to his historical rank. To contextualize this scarcity, Giorgio Vasari, another writer ranked slightly higher at #867 importance, still received 126K views in the same period. The data suggests that Du Fu's literary genius is substantially underrepresented in current online cultural traffic.

While his long-term interest appears to be slightly waning year-over-year by -6.5%, Du Fu showed a positive momentum shift of +7% between Q1 and Q3 of 2025, suggesting some pockets of renewed contemporary engagement.