"Facing enemies from all sides" originally meant to describe outstanding literary talents, and later extended to praise others for their profound skills and ability to cope with various adverse situations, and was also used to describe being isolated and helpless and being attacked by hostility from many sides. The idiom comes from the fifth dynasty Wang Dingbao's "Tang Jiayan Haixu Doesn't Meet", "Zihua is talented, faces enemies on all sides, and is known for its eight rhymes".
Regarding this idiom, whether it is its original meaning or the two meanings that were later derived, it is actually closely related to the "Zihua" mentioned in the original text of "Tang Jiayan Haixu Encounter", that is, the poet Wu Rong in the late Tang Dynasty.
Wu Rong, whose name is Zihua, was a native of Shanyin, Yuezhou (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang). In the last years of the Tang Dynasty, there were friends and eunuchs in the court, there were feudal towns outside, and the reigning king was mediocre, coupled with natural disasters and military disasters, so that the government and the opposition were in turmoil, and the people were not able to make a living, this tragic scene also deeply affected the poetry of the late Tang Dynasty.
As a poet of the late Tang Dynasty, Wu Rong's poetic style was not only influenced by social chaos, but also by his friends Shi Guanxiu, Pi Rixiu, Tortoise Meng, Fang Gan, Han Wei and other poets.
Wu Rong's poems, no matter what style and subject matter, more or less express the contradiction between Wu Rong and Yin, and this dilemma is closely related to the chaotic and contradictory society of the late Tang Dynasty, and it is also closely related to his ill-fated career.
Wu Rong was born in the fourth year of Tang Xuanzong's reign (850), and he began to participate in the imperial examination in the sixth year of Tang Xuanzong's Xiantong (865), but he failed many times until the first year of the Tang Zhaozong Dragon Era (889), when he was already forty years old. Wu Rong not only had a bad career in the imperial examination, but even after entering the office, his career was also extremely bumpy.
In the first year of the Dragon Era (889), Wang Jian, the assassin of Langzhou, was unfavorable to Chen Jingxuan because of his attack on Xichuan Jiedu, and wrote to the imperial court to request the appointment of a new Xichuan Jiedu envoy, and expressed his willingness to submit to the new Jiedu envoy, and Gu Yanlang, the envoy of Dongchuan Jiedu, also asked to transfer Chen Jingxuan. In June, Tang Zhaozong recruited Chen Jingxuan as the commander of the Longwu army, reappointed Wei Zhaodu as the envoy of the Xichuan Festival, and Wu Rong was ordered to enter Shu with Wei Zhaodu.
After Wei Zhaodu arrived in Chengdu, Chen Jingxuan refused to accept the edict, and then Wei Zhaodu led the army to conquer for three years, but he was never able to break through Chengdu, and the imperial court had no choice but to retreat.
After returning to Shu in vain, Wu Rong returned to the imperial court again, and then served as an official to serve the imperial history, but because he was slandered, he was degraded to Jingnan, and was not recalled to the capital until the third year of Qianning (896), and served as the Langzhong of the Ministry of Rites, and then served as a bachelor of Hanlin, and the official to the middle scholar.
Wu Rong finally returned to the capital, but the situation in Guanzhong at this time became more and more chaotic, first the eunuch Liu Jishu and others imprisoned Tang Zhaozong, and established the crown prince Li Yu as the emperor. After that, Prime Minister Cui Yin and Sun Dezhao, the head of the escort, killed Liu Jishu again and supported the restoration of Zhaozong. In order to completely eliminate the eunuchs, Cui Yin actively contacted Zhu Wen, and even ordered Zhu Wen to lead troops into Beijing, while Han Quanzhi and other eunuchs actively joined forces with Fengxiang Li Maozhen and Wang Xingyu of Suining to confront them.
So, Zhu Wen took the opportunity to lead 70,000 troops from Hezhong to capture Tongzhou and Huazhou, and the troops came to the suburbs of Chang'an, while Han Quanzhu and other eunuchs took Tang Zhaozong hostage to Fengxiang to join Li Maozhen, and Guanzhong then fell into war.
In the first year of Tianfu (901), seeing the frequent chaos and wars in Guanzhong, Wu Rong could only escape from the capital and take refuge in Ruxiang (now northwest of Henan, bordering Tongguan County), until Zhu Wen defeated Li Maozhen in the third year of Tianfu (903), and the situation stabilized again, Wu Rong was recalled to the imperial court to serve as Hanlin, and later promoted to Hanlin Chengzhi.
In the same year, Wu Rong died at the age of fifty-four, and a few years after his death, the Tang Dynasty fell. Wu Rong was up and down in the sea all his life, and was reused several times, but he was immediately demoted or exiled to another country, not only did his career not go well, but he almost witnessed the demise of the Tang Dynasty. In such a troubled era, Wu Rong's situation can really be described as "being attacked from all sides".