Legend of the White Snake

For other uses, seeLegend of the White Snake (disambiguation).

Legend of the White Snake
Image from theSummer Palace,Beijing, China, depicting the legend
Traditional Chinese	Bạch xà truyện
Simplified Chinese	Bạch xà truyện
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Bái Shé Zhuàn Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Baak6Se4Cyun4 Southern Min HokkienPOJ Pe̍k-siâ-tōan or Pe̍h-siâ-tōan

TheLegend of the White Snakeis a Chinese legend centered around a romance between a man namedXu Xianand a female snake spirit namedBai Suzhen.It is counted as one of China's Four Great Folktales, the others beingLady Meng Jiang,Butterfly Lovers,andThe Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.

Early versions

The three stone pagodas ofWest Lake.

The snake-woman motif possibly came from Indian folklore.In the earliest versions the white snake was depicted as an evil demon. Over the centuries, however, the legend has evolved from a horror tale to a romance story about forbidden love.

"Li Huang"

TheTang-dynastystory collectionBoyi zhi(Bác dị chí;"Vast Records of the Strange" ), from the early 9th century, contains achuanqitale about a man named Li Huang (Lý hoàng) meeting an attractive woman clad in white (whose aunt is clothed in blue-green). After mating with the beauty at her residence, he returns home and falls ill, his body dissolving into water. His family searches for the woman and discovers that she is a giant white snake.

"The Three Pagodas of West Lake"

In theMing dynasty,some time before 1547, a collection of earlyhuabentales was printed by Hong Pian (Hồng tiện); in it was "The Three Pagodas of West Lake" (Tây Hồ tam tháp nhớ), likely the first work to set the legend in theSouthern SongcapitalLin'an Prefecture,or modernHangzhou.In this story, a man named Xi Xuanzan (Hề tuyên tán) meets a girl, her mother, and her grandmother; he falls in love with the mother — who is dressed in white — but the girl warns him that her mother has killed all her previous lovers. A Daoist exorcist exposes the mother as a white snake; her daughter is a black chicken and the grandmother an otter. He builds three stonepagodasin theWest Lakeand subjugates the creatures beneath them. Xi Xuanzan becomes a religious layman.

"Madam White Is Kept Forever Under the Thunder Peak Tower"

The story "Madam White Is Kept Forever Under the Thunder Peak Tower" (Bạch nương tử vĩnh trấn Lôi Phong Tháp) inFeng Menglong's influential 1624 collectionStories to Caution the Worldbegan to portray the White Snake in a sympathetic perspective.Xi Xuanzan had become Xu Xuan (Hứa tuyên), the Taoist exorcist had become a Buddhist monk namedFahai,and the White Snake now has a maid-servant (clothed in blue-green) named Qingqing (Thanh thanh), who is afish spirit.In this tale the White Snake tries to enrich her husband, but unwittingly turns him into a crime suspect; when he tries to leave her, she threatens him with a flood. The story ends with the righteous monk Fahai trapping the demons under theLeifeng Pagoda( "Thunder Peak Tower" ).

• 
  An illustration fromStories to Caution the World(1624).
• 
  An illustration fromLeifeng Pagoda(1806).
• 
  An illustration fromThe Righteous Demons(1869 print).

Qing dynasty texts

The Qing dynasty saw major transformations of the legend thanks toChinese operaandquyi(storytelling performances). While Huang Tubi ( hoàng đồ tất )'s 1738chuanqiplayLeifeng Pagodais considered similar to Feng Menglong's version, a major shift seemed to have occurred in texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Three long- or medium-length works from this period are: Fang Chengpei's (Phương thành bồi)chuanqiplayLeifeng Pagoda(1777); a thirteen-chapter novel (alsoLeifeng Pagoda,1806) by Yushan Zhuren (Ngọc Sơn chủ nhân,"Master of the Jade Mountain" ), andThe Righteous Demons(Nghĩa yêu truyền,preface dated 1809), a transcribedtancitext by Chen Yuqian (Trần ngộ càn). In all of them, White Snake is presented as endearing and devoted; while Fahai's portrayal is more negative.

Xu XianlendsBai Suzhenhis umbrella on a ferry boat inWest Lake.(Yun opera)

Xiaoqingsteals silver from the treasury of a corrupt magistrate to finance Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian's shop. (Hubei Han opera)

Bai Suzhen battles the guardians of the magical herb. (Peking opera)

Xiaoqing saves the pregnant Bai Suzhen fromSkandaduring the Battle ofJinshan Temple.(Kunqu)

A furious Xiaoqing wants to kill Xu Xian onBroken Bridge,but Bai Suzhen stops her. (Yangzhou opera)

Plot

The following is one version fromChinese opera:

A white snake and ablue-greensnake fromMount Emeitransform themselves into two young women calledBai SuzhenandXiaoqing,respectively. They become best friends and travel toLin'an Prefecture(orHangzhou), where they meet a young man namedXu Xianon a ferry-boat inWest Lake.Xu Xian lends them his umbrella because it is raining. Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen fall in love instantly and are eventually married. They open a medicine shop.

Fahai,the abbot ofJinshan TempleinZhen gian g,approaches Xu Xian and tells him that his wife is a snake. Xu Xian brushes him off, so Fahai tells him that he should have her drinkrealgar wineduring theDragon Boat 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 travels toKunlun,where she braves danger to steal a magical herb guarded by disciples of theOld Man of the South Pole.The herb restores Xu Xian to life.

After coming back to life, Xu Xian is still fearful of his wife. He travels alone to Jinshan Temple, where Fahai imprisons him, telling him that he must live in the temple in order to save himself from the snake demons. Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing fight with Fahai to rescue Xu Xian. During the battle, Fahai calls on guardian deities likeSkandaandSangharamato help him. Bai Suzhen uses her powers to flood the temple, causing collateral damage 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. Xiaoqing helps her escape back to Hangzhou.

Meanwhile, Xu Xian realizes that his wife's love for him is genuine and that he no longer cares if she is a snake. He manages to escape after persuading a sympathetic young monk to release him. When he reunites with his battered wife onBroken Bridge,where they first met, Xiaoqing is so furious at him that she intends to kill him, but Bai Suzhen stops her. Xu Xian expresses his regret, and both Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing forgive him, Xiaoqing more reluctantly.

Bai Suzhen gives birth to their son, Xu Mengjiao (in some versionsXu Shilin). Fahai tracks them down, defeats Bai Suzhen and imprisons her underLeifeng Pagoda,despite pleadings from Xu Xian. Xiaoqing flees, vowing vengeance.

Subplots and spin-offs

Prequel

Lü Dongbin,one of theEight Immortals,disguises himself as atangyuanvendor at the Broken Bridge. A boy called Xu Xian buys sometangyuanfrom 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 thetangyuaninto 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. In the meantime, the terrapin spirit has accumulated enough powers to take on human form, so he transforms into a Buddhist monk called Fahai.

Sequel

Twenty years after his mother is buried under the pagoda, Xu Mengjiao earns the position ofzhuangyuan(top scholar) in theimperial examinationand 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.

In a version Fahai 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'skasaya.

Modifications and alternate versions

The legend has been presented in a number of majorChinese operas,films, and television series.

The white snake was simply known as the "White Lady" or "White Maiden" (Bạch nương tử) in the original tale inFeng Menglong'sStories to Caution the World.The name "Bai Suzhen" was created in a later era.

Some adaptations of the legend intheater,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'sfilial pietymoved Heaven.
• Aretconor 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

Further information:List of media adaptations of the Legend of the White Snake

Diorama atHaw Par Villa,Singapore, depicting the battle between Bai Suzhen and Fahai.

See also

• Chinese mythology
• Duanwu Festival
• Leifeng Pagoda
• Melusine
• Snakes in Chinese mythology

References and further reading

• Idema, Wilt L. (2009).The White Snake and Her Son: A Translation of the Precious Scroll of Thunder Peak with Related Texts.Hackett Publishing.ISBN9781603843751.
• —— (2012)."Old Tales for New Times: Some Comments on the Cultural Translation of China's Four Great Folktales in the Twentieth Century hai mươi thế kỷ Trung Quốc tứ đại dân gian chuyện xưa văn hóa phiên dịch"(PDF).Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies.9(1): 25–46. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on October 6, 2014.
• Mao, Xian (2013).Cowherd and Weaver and other most popular love legends in China.eBook: Kindle Direct Publishing.

External links

Media related toLegend of the White Snakeat Wikimedia Commons

• 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 Snake
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2012 production
• White snake in dream meaningand interpretation atsnake dream meaning.