The Legend of the White Snake is a Chinese legend. It has since been presented in a number of major
Chinese opera
Traditional Chinese opera (), or ''Xiqu'', is a form of musical theatre in China with roots going back to the early periods in China. It is an amalgamation of various art forms that existed in ancient China, and evolved gradually over more tha ...
s, films, and television series.
The earliest attempt to fictionalize the story in printed form appears to be ''The White Maiden Locked for Eternity in the
Leifeng Pagoda
Leifeng Pagoda is a five story tall tower with eight sides, located on Sunset Hill south of the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Originally constructed in the year AD 975, it collapsed in 1924 but was rebuilt in 2002. Since then, it ha ...
'' () in
Feng Menglong
Feng Menglong (1574–1646), courtesy names Youlong (), Gongyu (), Ziyou (), or Eryou (), was a Chinese historian, novelist, and poet of the late Ming Dynasty. He was born in Changzhou County, now part of Suzhou, in Jiangsu Province.
Life
Fen ...
's ''
Stories to Caution the World
''Jingshi Tongyan'' (警世通言, ''Stories to Caution the World'') is the second of a trilogy of widely celebrated Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular story collections, compiled and edited by Feng Menglong and published in 1624. The first com ...
'', which was written during the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
.
The legend is now counted as one of China's Four Great Folktales, the others being ''
Lady Meng Jiang
Lady Meng Jiang or Meng Jiang Nü () is a Chinese tale with many variations. Later versions are set in the Qin dynasty, when Lady Meng Jiang's husband was pressed into service by imperial officials and sent as corvee labor to build the Great Wa ...
'', ''
Butterfly Lovers
The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend of a tragic love story of a pair of lovers, Liang Shanbo () and Zhu Yingtai (), whose names form the title of the story. The title is often abbreviated to Liang Zhu ().
The story was selected as one o ...
'', and ''
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
"The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" are characters found in Chinese mythology and characters appearing eponymously in a romantic Chinese folk tale. The story tells of the romance between Zhinü (; the weaver girl, symbolizing the star Vega) and ...
''.
Basic story
Lü Dongbin
Lü Dongbin (796 CE – 1016 CE) is a legendary Chinese scholar and poet said to have lived during the Tang Dynasty. Whether he actually lived the two hundred and twenty years cannot be determined. Elevated to the status of an immortal in the C ...
, one of the
Eight Immortals
The Eight Immortals () are a group of legendary ''xian'' ("immortals") in Chinese mythology. Each immortal's power can be transferred to a vessel () that can bestow life or destroy evil. Together, these eight vessels are called the "Covert Eight ...
, disguises himself as a ''
tangyuan'' vendor at the Broken Bridge near the
West Lake
West Lake (; ) is a freshwater lake in Hangzhou, China. It is divided into five sections by three causeways. There are numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and natural/artificial islands within the lake. Gushan (孤山) is the largest natural is ...
in
Hangzhou
Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whi ...
. A boy called
Xu Xian () buys some ''tangyuan'' from Lü Dongbin without knowing that they are actually immortality pills. After eating them, he does not feel hungry for the next three days so he goes back to ask the vendor why. Lü Dongbin laughs and carries Xu Xian to the bridge, where he flips him upside-down and causes him to vomit the ''tangyuan'' into the lake.
In the lake dwells a white snake spirit who has been practicing Taoist magical arts. She eats the pills and gains 500 years' worth of magical powers. She, therefore, feels grateful to Xu Xian, and their fates become intertwined. There is another terrapin (or tortoise) spirit also training in the lake who did not manage to consume any of the pills; he is very jealous of the white snake. One day, the white snake sees a beggar on the bridge who has caught a green snake and wants to dig out the snake's gall and sell it. The white snake transforms into a woman and buys the green snake from the beggar, thus saving the green snake's life. The green snake is grateful to the white snake and she regards the white snake as an elder sister.
Eighteen years later, during the
Qingming Festival
The Qingming festival or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors' Day), is a traditional Chinese festival observed by the Han Chinese of mainland China, Hong Ko ...
, the white and green snakes transform themselves into two young women called
Bai Suzhen
Bai Suzhen ( zh, t=白素貞), also known as Lady Bai ( zh, c=白娘子, links=no), is a mythological figure in Chinese folk religion. She is a one-thousand-year-old white snake spirit and the title character of the Legend of the White Snake, ...
() and
Xiaoqing (), respectively. They meet Xu Xian at the Broken Bridge in Hangzhou. Xu Xian lends them his umbrella because it is raining. Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen gradually fall in love and are eventually married. They move to
Zhenjiang
Zhenjiang, alternately romanized as Chinkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou (to its north) and b ...
, where they open a medicine shop.
In the meantime, the terrapin spirit has accumulated enough powers to take on human form, so he transforms into a Buddhist monk called
Fahai (). Still angry with Bai Suzhen, Fahai plots to break up her relationship with Xu Xian. He approaches Xu Xian and tells him that during the
Duanwu Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival ( zh, s=端午节, t=端午節) is a traditional Chinese holiday which occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, which corresponds to late May or June in the Gregorian calendar.
Names
The Engl ...
his wife should drink
realgar wine
Realgar wine or Xionghuang wine (Chinese: , ''Xiónghuáng Jiǔ'') is a Chinese alcoholic drink that consists of huangjiu ("yellow wine") dosed with powdered realgar, a yellow-orange arsenic sulfide mineral (As4S4). It is traditionally consumed a ...
, an alcoholic drink commonly consumed during that festival. Bai Suzhen unsuspectingly drinks the wine and reveals her true form as a large white snake. Xu Xian dies of shock after seeing that his wife is not human. Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing travel to
Mount Emei
Mount Emei (; ), alternately Mount Omei, is a mountain in Sichuan Province, China, and is the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China. Mount Emei sits at the western rim of the Sichuan Basin. The mountains west of it are know ...
, where they brave danger to steal a magical herb that restores Xu Xian to life.
![Haw Par Villa 13, Dec 14](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Haw_Par_Villa_13%2C_Dec_14.jpg)
After coming back to life, Xu Xian still maintains his love for Bai Suzhen despite knowing her true nature. Fahai tries to separate them again by capturing Xu Xian and imprisoning him at the Jinshan Temple. Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing fight with Fahai to rescue Xu Xian. During the battle, Bai Suzhen uses her powers to flood the temple, causing collateral damage and drowning many innocent people in the process. However, her powers are limited because she is already pregnant with Xu Xian's child, so she fails to save her husband. Xu Xian later manages to escape from Jinshan Temple and reunite with his wife in
Hangzhou
Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whi ...
, where Bai Suzhen gives birth to their son, Xu Mengjiao (). Fahai tracks them down, defeats Bai Suzhen and imprisons her in
Leifeng Pagoda
Leifeng Pagoda is a five story tall tower with eight sides, located on Sunset Hill south of the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Originally constructed in the year AD 975, it collapsed in 1924 but was rebuilt in 2002. Since then, it ha ...
. Xiaoqing flees, vowing vengeance.
Twenty years later, Xu Mengjiao earns the position of ''
zhuangyuan
''Zhuangyuan'', or ''trạng nguyên'' in Vietnamese, variously translated into English as principal graduate, primus, or optimus, was the title given to the scholar who achieved the highest score on highest level of the Imperial examination, (i ...
'' (top scholar) in the
imperial examination
The imperial examination (; lit. "subject recommendation") refers to a civil-service examination system in Imperial China, administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureaucrats by ...
and returns home in glory to visit his parents. At the same time, Xiaoqing, who had spent the intervening years refining her powers, goes to the Jinshan Temple to confront Fahai and defeats him. Bai Suzhen is freed from Leifeng Pagoda and reunited with her husband and son, while Fahai flees and hides inside the stomach of a crab. There is a saying that a crab's internal fat is orange because it resembles the color of Fahai's ''
kasaya''.
Modifications and alternate versions
The white snake was simply known as the "White Lady" or "White Maiden" () in the original tale in
Feng Menglong
Feng Menglong (1574–1646), courtesy names Youlong (), Gongyu (), Ziyou (), or Eryou (), was a Chinese historian, novelist, and poet of the late Ming Dynasty. He was born in Changzhou County, now part of Suzhou, in Jiangsu Province.
Life
Fen ...
's ''
Stories to Caution the World
''Jingshi Tongyan'' (警世通言, ''Stories to Caution the World'') is the second of a trilogy of widely celebrated Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular story collections, compiled and edited by Feng Menglong and published in 1624. The first com ...
''. The name "Bai Suzhen" was created in a later era.
The original story was a story of good and evil, with the Buddhist monk Fahai setting out to save Xu Xian's soul from the white snake spirit, who was depicted as an evil demon. Over the centuries, however, the legend has evolved from a horror tale to a romance story, with Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian being genuinely in love with each other even though their relationship is forbidden by the laws of nature.
Some adaptations of the legend in
theater
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...
, film, television and other media have made extensive modifications to the original story, including the following:
* The green snake (Xiaoqing) is portrayed as a treacherous antagonist who betrays the white snake, as opposed to the traditional depiction of her as the white snake's close friend and confidant.
* Alternatively, the green snake (Xiaoqing) is less evolved, less well-trained compared to the white snake (Bai Suzhen), and thus less cognisant of what it means to be human. She is more animalistic and therefore sometimes at odds with Bai Suzhen, thus explaining their differences both in character and actions.
* Fahai is portrayed in a more sympathetic light as opposed to the traditional depiction of him as a vindictive and jealous villain: rigid and authoritarian, yet well-intentioned. His background story is also different in some adaptations.
* Bai Suzhen is freed from Leifeng Pagoda because her son's
filial piety
In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian ''Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the late W ...
moved Heaven.
* A
retcon
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established diegetic facts in the plot of a fictional work (those established through the narrative itself) are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subse ...
or revisionist version of the story relates that Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen were actually immortals who fell in love and were banished from Heaven because celestial laws forbade their romance. They are reincarnated as a male human and a female white snake spirit respectively and their story begins.
Adaptations
See also
*
Chinese mythology
Chinese mythology () is mythology that has been passed down in oral form or recorded in literature in the geographic area now known as Greater China. Chinese mythology includes many varied myths from regional and cultural traditions.
Much of t ...
*
Duanwu Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival ( zh, s=端午节, t=端午節) is a traditional Chinese holiday which occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, which corresponds to late May or June in the Gregorian calendar.
Names
The Engl ...
*
Leifeng Pagoda
Leifeng Pagoda is a five story tall tower with eight sides, located on Sunset Hill south of the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Originally constructed in the year AD 975, it collapsed in 1924 but was rebuilt in 2002. Since then, it ha ...
*
Melusine
Mélusine () or Melusina is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down (much like a lamia or a mermaid). She is also s ...
*
Snakes in Chinese mythology
Snakes (also known as serpents) are an important motif in Chinese mythology. There are various myths, legends, and folk tales about snakes. Chinese mythology refers to these and other myths found in the historical geographic area(s) of China. The ...
Notes
References and further reading
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External links
Fashion/art film starring Daphne Guinness, directed by Indrani.''Legend of White Snake'' – Stage Performance from Penang, Malaysia Stories to Caution the World in Google Books Lady White SnakeOregon Shakespeare Festival, 2012 productionWhite snake in dream meaningand interpretation a
snake dream meaning
{{DEFAULTSORT:Legend of the White Snake
Legendary serpents
Shapeshifting
Chinese operas
Female legendary creatures
Hangzhou in fiction
Love stories
Buddhist folklore
Chinese legends