望风披靡

Origin and story

Sima Xiangru's Shanglin Fu describes the grandeur of an imperial hunting park through elaborate poetic display. Among its landscapes are fragrant plants spreading over marshes and plains, bending in response to the wind and releasing their scent. The phrase there is ying feng pi mi, 'bending before the wind.' Later wording changes the first character and carries the image into human affairs: people or forces give way before an overwhelming presence as plants bend before a gust. It can describe military collapse, but its underlying picture is vegetation in a literary landscape, not an original story about frightened soldiers.