Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a very important part of Chinese folktales. It generally means that the soul of a living being will start a new life in a different physical body in the mortal world after the original body biologically died.

In the early age, more than 2000 years ago, Chinese people believed that death is a one-way trip. When they died, their soul just separated from their body, and traveled to the Underworld and lived there instead. However, things changed when the idea of reincarnation was introduced along with Buddhism from ancient India to China during the Eastern Han dynasty (25 A.D.~220 A.D.).

The spread of Buddhism greatly reshaped the concepts of the Underworld and afterlife in Chinese folklore. Other native religions, such as Taoism, also absorbed the original idea of reincarnation from Buddhism and created their own version of transmigration to explain the afterlife. As the time passed by, all those things were mixed together. Eventually, during Tang dynasty (618A.D.－907A.D.) and Song dynasty (960A.D.-1279A.D.), a very complex, sometimes even paradoxical, belief system we know today took its form.

How do people reincarnate in Chinese folktales?
In Chinese mythology, after a living being dies, its soul will separate from its physical body and travel to the underworld, a place is governed by a very complicated bureaucracy and ten Judges who called “阎王” (Yan-Wang, Yama, or “Kings of Underworld”). There are tons of things, such as trails and punishments, waiting for the dead in the underworld.

Normally, after being punished for its sins in the former life, a soul will get its ticket to the afterlife assigned by the tenth Judge who is in charge of reincarnation (unless it's too sinful to reincarnate and must be punished eternally). After that, it will be sent to the last stop in the underworld — 奈河 (Nai River). It said that Nai River is the boundary between the underworld and the mortal world. Once the soul crosses it, it will be reborn in the mortal world and the new life will begin.

However, there is only one bridge on Nai River which is called 奈何桥 (Nai He Bridge, “Bridge of Resigned One”). Its name means that no matter how many regrets a soul carried or how unwilling a soul is, it has to let them go, once it is reincarnated.

To do that, before a soul crossing the bridge, it will meet an old goddess called 孟婆 (Meng Po, or “Old Lady Meng”). She will demand the soul to take a bowl of soup she cooked, the so-called 孟婆汤 (Old Lady Meng’s soup). The soup serves the same purpose as the water of Lethe in Greek mythology which will erase all memory of the dead and make them ready for reincarnation.

However, in some stories, due to mistakes or some special destinies, a soul could manage to cross the bridge without drinking the soup. Consequently, it kept all its memories in past life when it was reborn in the mortal world.

The influences of reincarnation on Chinese folktales
Though the idea of reincarnation was introduced by Buddhism, Chinese mythology have a slightly different opinion about it from Buddhism. While Buddhism thinks the circle of rebirths and redeaths is a suffering and the ultimate goal of reincarnation is to achieve Nirvana (the liberation from repeated rebirth), Chinese mythology prefer to consider it as a natural law and sometimes even can be a good thing. After all, if you are well-behaved during in your lifetime, you have nothing to worry about the afterlife. And if you are doing bad things, you will be punished sooner or later.

Due to this belief, destroying someone’s soul is considered to be an extremely cruel thing which means not only killing one’s life, but also destroying his/her/its opportunity to go to the afterlife. This was also the reason why Xiao-Bai desperately wanted to save Xu Xuan’s soul at the very end, even at cost of her human form. If Xu Xuan’s soul was destroyed, he would lost his opportunity to reincarnate.

More importantly, reincarnation means that a peson will still have a chance to meet those who are important to you again after you and/or they die. Even though reincarnation will erase all hismemories, Chinese mythology believes that some strong bonds between souls can still be passed down form one life to another without memories, such as love, family relationship, friendship, hatred, sometimes even financial debts.

The so-called 前世姻缘(Love from a past life) commonly mentioned in traditional romance stories is a good example of this belief. In those stories, people who were married couples, or in love but couldn’t be together, in a past life would often fell in love without particular reasons when they met in another life. Similarly, love at first sight sometimes were also interpreted as an “inherited” love from a past life. Just like the last scene in White Snake, the reincarnated Xu Xuan told Blanca that she looked very familiar which means that his soul still kept the love for Xiao-Bai, even though all his memories were lost.