After about ten years of training and study, she became a courtesan with both talent and appearance who could write poems and sing.

While performing a dance for her master, Du Qiuniang sang the poem "Golden Thread Clothes".

[4][5][6] Her only surviving complete poem is the Golden Dress Song (simplified Chinese: 金缕衣; traditional Chinese: 金縷衣; pinyin: Jīnlǚyī), said to have been addressed to Li (translation by Victor Mair): I urge you, milord, not to cherish your robe of golden thread, Rather, milord, I urge you to cherish the time of your youth; When the flower is open and pluckable, you simply must pluck it, Don't wait till there are no flowers, vainly to break branches.

[7][8] The Golden Dress Song, counseling the listener to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of youth, has been compared to Robert Herrick's To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.

[9] When she was living, poverty and elderly, in her hometown, the poet Du Mu met her and wrote a poem about her (杜秋娘诗).

According to the writing time of“The poem Du Qiuniang” with the preface, it was death after the ninth year of Yamato (835).

Du Qiuniang, who was in her forties, hid from the mutiny and froze to death by the Xuanwu Lake(玄武湖).

It is said that in the second year, a patch of peony grew out of nowhere on the shore of Xuanwu Lake and bloomed with blood-red flowers.

People rushed to say that this woman who had gone through ups and downs was the Peony Fairy, so a temple was built here to worship her.