In the early 730s , he travelled in the Jiangsu / Zhejiang area ; his earliest surviving poem , describing a poetry contest , is thought to date from the end of this period , around 735 . In that year , he took the civil service exam , likely in Chang 'an . He failed , to his surprise and that of centuries of later critics . Hung concludes that he probably failed because his prose style at the time was too dense and obscure , while Chou suggests his failure to cultivate connections in the capital may have been to blame . After this failure , he went back to traveling , this time around Shandong and Hebei .