Tu Fu was forty-four in 755 when the An Lu-shan rebellion began. When he died fifteen years later, political control had nominally returned to imperial hands, but the turmoil set in motion by the rebellion had spawned second- and third-generation rebellions. By then, many of the main leaders on both sides had died, but there was no lack of parties eager to exploit the weaknesses revealed and deepened by the initial rebellion. The unrest spread beyond the Central Plains of An Lu-shan's activities, southward into the Yangtze region and southwest into Szechuan Province. To the native disruptions were added incursions by Uighurs to the northwest and by Tibetans in Szechuan. Even after the surrender of rebel forces in 763, the northeastern provinces essentially retained their independence. For the remaining twelve decades of the dynasty an uneasy balance, with periodic outbreaks of conflict, was maintained among the ambitions of the various parties.

From the evidence of Tu Fu's poems, he either personally experienced or closely followed these developments, at first at the center, in the Central Plains, later on the empire's periphery. At the rebellion's outbreak, Tu Fu was living in the Ch'ang-an region, and thus he witnessed and recorded many of the dramatic crises of the first years. With the prolongation of the conflict, he moved his family to Szechuan (in 759). There he encountered local rebellions and Tibetan invasions, while, as his poems show, he continued to follow the news and rumors from the Central Plains.