Idiom Explanation:
Everything is ready, only the east wind is not blowing up, can not set fire to the enemy’s fleet. The metaphor is that everything is ready, only one last important condition is missing.
Pronunciation:
万事俱备，只欠东风
wàn shì jù bèi，zhǐ qiàn dōng fēng
origin:
明朝·罗贯中《三国演义》第四十九回：“孔明索纸笔，屏退左右，密书十六字曰：欲破曹公，须用火攻；万事俱备，只欠东风。”
story:
In 208 A.D., Cao Cao led an 800,000-strong army stationed at Chibi in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in an attempt to defeat Liu Bei in Shu and then attack Sun Quan in Wu. Liu Bei adopted the strategy of joining forces with Wu to fight against Cao Cao.
At that time, Sun Quan and Liu Bei both had very few troops, while Cao Cao had many troops and was in an overwhelming advantage. Zhou Yu, the commander of the Wu army, and Zhuge Liang, the military advisor of the Shu army, were studying together the plan of attacking Cao Cao. Finally, they decided to take advantage of Cao Cao’s arrogant and gullible mood and adopt a fire attack in their battle plan.
Zhou Yu first used a counter-strategy to induce Cao Cao to kill Cai Mao and Zhang Yun, powerful generals in Cao Cao’s army who were familiar with water warfare and could resist them. Then he asked Pang Tong to pretend to offer a plan to trick Cao Cao’s army into linking their ships together. In this way, if a fire broke out and the ships could not be separated quickly, Cao Cao’s army would be wiped out.
Next, Zhou Yu used the “bitter meat trick”: he beat up the veteran general Huang Gai in front of many people, and then asked Huang Gai to pretend to surrender to Cao Cao. In fact, Huang Gai filled his surrendered ship with flammable items and prepared to rush to Cao’s camp and launch a fire attack when he fraudulently surrendered.
However, when all the links were arranged, Zhou Yu was not happy, but worried and actually fell ill. It turns out that, in order to successfully realize the battle plan of attacking Cao’s army by fire, a very important condition is needed to set fire to Cao’s army on the north bank, and the fire must rely on the southeast wind to do so. Here is the problem. Because it was in the middle of winter season, every day the northwest wind.
When Zhuge Liang visited Zhou Yu, he eagerly asked him what he could do. Zhuge Liang told Zhou Yu that he could call the wind and rain, and could borrow the southeast wind for three days and nights to help Zhou Yu. After listening to Zhuge Liang’s words, Zhou Yu was so happy that he immediately ordered someone to build an earthen platform called the “Seven Star Altar”. Zhuge Liang prayed for the southeast wind on the “Seven Star Altar”. On the scheduled date, the southeasterly wind was really strong, and Zhou Yu successfully completed his fire attack plan.
