Legend of White Snake

The Legend of the White Snake （白蛇传）, also known as Xu Xian and Lady White （许仙与白娘子）, is one of the most famous Chinese folktales. It has been adapted into countless different versions and presented in Chinese operas, films, TV series and other media.

The story probably took its form in Song dynasty (A.D. 960-1279) as a folktale told by street storytellers. In Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1271-1368), it already became a regular topic in traditional operas and stage plays. However, the scripts of those operas have long lost, so we have no idea how it looked like back then. The earliest extant novella about the Legend of White Snake was written by novelist Feng Meng-Long around 1620s and published in 1624, called Lady White Who was Imprisoned in Leifeng Tower Forever. It was very similar to today's story, but still had a few differences.

Original story
Since the legend itself already had numerous different versions hundreds of years ago, it's hard to tell which version was the original one, nevertheless, most of the versions followed a similar outline.

The story began with a young man named Xu Xian. It was Qingming Festival, Xu Xian strolled around the West Lake of Hangzhou City. When he was passing by the Broken Bridge, he met two extremly beautiful women who were seeking shelter from the rain. They proclaimed themselves as "Lady Bai" or “Lady White” (Bai means "White" in Chinese) and her servant girl “Xiao-Qing”. Xu Xian, in his kindness, lent them his umbrella. Lady White thanked Xu Xian and invited Xu Xian to her house. Xu Xian was fascinated by Lady White’s beauty, so he visited Lady White a few days later on the pretext of picking up his umbrella. They gradually got to know each other, fell in love and eventually got married.

After they married, Xu Xian and Lady White moved to Zhenjiang City. They were kind-hearted people, won a good reputation in the locals and lived a very happy life. However, one day, Xu Xian met a Buddhist monk from Jinshan Temple called Fa-Hai, he told Xu Xian that Lady White and Xiao-Qing were not human, but demons. At first, Xu Xian didn't believe him so Fa-Hai suggested him to let his wife drink some realgar wine, an alcoholic drink which could use for driving away insects and snakes but won't harm human. Although being sceptical of Fa-Hai, Xu Xian still bought some realger wine and invited Lady White to have a drink at the Duanwu Festival. Without suspecting, Lady White took the realger wine and got poisoned immediately, thus she instinctively revealed her true form -- a big white snake. Being terrified by what he saw, Xu Xian escaped from home and ran to Jinshan Temple for protection.

When Lady White regained her consciousness, she realized what had happened and began to search her husband. After learning her husband was in Jinshan Temple, she and Xiao-Qing went to there and wanted to explain everything to Xu Xian. However, since she was a demon, she couldn't enter the temple and Xu Xian was too afraid to meet her. As a result, Lady White mistakenly believed that Fa-Hai imprisoned her husband, so she threatened to use her power to change the flow of Yangzte river and flood the temple if Fa-Hai didn't release her husband. But Fa-Hai didn't believe her because she would directly violate the law of Heaven and receive severe punishments for doing that.

Having no choice, Lady White and Xiao-Qing changed the flow of Yangzte river, which caused serious collateral damage and drowned many innocent people. And Fa-hai also had to use his power to protect the temple from the flood. At this point, Xu Xian was forced to show up and admited that he wasn't imprisoned by Fa-Hai and was afraid of Lady White.

Disheartenedly, Lady White gave up and dispel the flood. On one hand, she was disappointed by her husband, on the other hand, she also found Fa-Hai was too powerful to defeat. She knew she had made a huge mistake, and was willing to take the punishment but pleaded with Fa-Hai to forgive Xiao-Qing. But Fa-Hai refused because Xiao-Qing was aslo a demon. He forced Lady White and Xiao-Qing to transform their original forms, sealed them in an alms bowl, and buried the alms bowl under the Leifeng Tower.

Important Variants
As mentioned above, the legend of White Snake had lots of versions with different plots and endings. Some are considered to be more widely-accepted and legitimate. Here are some important versions.

Lady White Who was Imprisoned in Leifeng Tower Forever
As the earliest extant novella about the Legend of White Snake,  Lady White Who was Imprisoned in Leifeng Tower Forever had almost the same plot as the original story with only one major defference. In this story, Lady White was depicted as a villain who became domineering and obsessive with Xu Xuan (in this story Xu Xian was called Xu Xuan), and Fa-Hai was the hero who saved Xu Xuan from Lady White. Since it was a fable about warning people not to be obsessed with women's beauty, it's not hard to understand the reason behind this defference. Also, in this version, Xiao-Qing was a green fish demon instead of snake demon.

The Legend of Leifeng Tower
During 18th century, the playwright Fang Cheng-Pei wrote another traditional opera about White Snake called The Legend of Leifeng Tower (also known as the Legend of a Righteous Demon ).

The first part of The legend of Leifeng Tower had the same plot as the original story. However, while Lady White was poisoned by realger wine and revealed her true form, Xu Xian died directly due to the shock. Although she was sad about her identity being exposed, Lady White still asked Xiao-Qing to preserve Xu Xian's body. Then she sneaked into a sacred mountain, stole some mythical herbs and eventually resurrect Xu Xian. After that, Lady White also tricked Xu Xian to believe that she  was not a demon, and the white snake he saw was just some random snake.

However, Fa-Hai, who believed the relationship between human and demon was forbidden, lured Xu Xian into Jinshan Temple and forced him to give up this relationship. Just like original story, Lady White and Xiao Qing angrily went to Jinshan Temple and changed the flow of Yangzte river to flood the temple. However, Fa-Hai defeat her. While he was going to capture Lady White, Fa-Hai found that her was pregnant, and the baby inside her was a reincarnation of a deity. The reincarnated deity protected his mother, allowing Lady White and Xiao-Qing to escape.

Since he couldn't capture Lady White due to her unborn child, Fa-Hai persuaded Xu Xian to help him capturing Lady White in order to prevent her harming other people. He released Xu Xian and let him spy Lady White until she gave birth to her child. Hence, Xu Xian went back to Lady White and deceived her into thinking he escaped from Jinshan Temple. Although Lady White blamed Xu Xian for what happened, she still accepted his apology. They went to Qiantang City, and visited Xian's sister in oder to find a safe place to take care of the unborn baby.

A few months later, Lady White gave birth to a boy and named him "Xu Shi-Lin". Seeing that Lady White had given birth to his son, Xu Xian informed Fa-Hai and helped Fa-Hai to trap Lady White. However, he begged Fa-Hai to not harm Lady White and sweared that he would become a monk to redeem Lady White's fault. Fa-Hai accepted his request and imprisoned Lady White in the Leifeng Tower. After that, Xu Xian asked his sister to adopt his son Xu Shi-Lin and followed Fa-Hai to the Jinshan Temple.

Sixteen years later, Xu Shi-Lin, who raised by the family of Xu Xian's sister and Xiao-Qing (secretly), became a famous scholar. He achieved the highest rank on the Imperial Examination, and was summoned by Emperor. In the palace, he told Emperor the story of his mother (mostly heard from Xiao-Qing), and pleaded with Emperor to give an order to release Lady White. Moved by the story of Lady White, Emperor issued an order allowing Xu Shi-Lin to enter the Leifeng Tower to visit his mother, but he couldn't command Jinshan Temple to release Lady White. So, Xu Shi-Lin reunited with his mother in the tower. The deities in Heaven was moved by their relationship, and decided that Lady White had been redeemed. Eventually, Lady White was released from Leifeng tower and reunited with her families.

This opera received huge success and basically reconstructed the Legend of White Snake we know today.

The Legend of White Snake
In 1950s, the playwright Tian Han refined the script of The legend of Leifeng Tower and wrote a Beijing opera called The Legend of White Snake. He kept the storyline but deleted some scenes to made it shorter and more suitable for modern stages. It was in this opera, Tian Han gave Lady White the well-known name “Bai Su-Zhen” (means "innocent and pure") which was widely accepted by audiences and eventually became a the name of Lady White. Moreover, Tian Han gave Xiao-Qing more highlights, made her a heroic character. And the relationship between Bai Su-Zhen and Xiao-Qing became more like sisters instead of master and servant.

He also deleted the storyline of Bai Su-Zhen's son, Xu Shi-Lin. In this version, it was Xiao-Qing who led her reinforcements destroyed the Leifeng Tower and released Bai Su-zhen.

The New Legend of Lady White
In 1992, Jingde Legend and Taiwan TV released a TV series called The New Legend of Lady White which recieved enormous success. This version mostly based on the storyline of The Legend of Leifeng Tower but depicted Xu Xian as a hero. In this version, Xu Xian loved Bai Su-Zhen from the beginning to the end and never betray her, even after she revealed her true identity.

This TV series also adapted the idea of past-life connections between Xu Xian and Bai Su-Zhen which was only mentioned in some local tales before. It designed a plot that Xu Xian once saved Bai Su-zhen in a past life (when she was just a snake), and Bai Su-zhen wanted to repay him in this life but eventually fell in love with him. This plot widely spreaded the idea of past-life connections between Xu Xian and Bai Su-Zhen, as a result, the past-life relationship between this couple has been widely accepted as a part of the story nowadays.

Other interesting Variants

 * The role of Fa-Hai was so hateful that some versions proclaimed that Fa-Hai was actually a demon (toad demon or tortoise demon) who was under the guise of a Buddhist monk (so that it wouldn't bring dishonor upon Buddhism). Those stories believed that Fa-Hai had a fight with Lady White and lost before they gained their human forms.  He resented Lady White and would grab any opportunities to ruin her life.
 * In some early operas of the Legend of White Snake, Xiao-Qing originally was male. He wanted to marry Lady White when they frist met, but Lady White defeat him easily. Being ashamed of his impoliteness, Xiao-Qing transformed into a servant girl, and sweared to serve Lady White with her entire life.