The Legend of White Snake
The Legend of White Snake begins with a man selling tangyuan, (a type of rice flour treat, sometimes made with pumpkin skin) on a river bank in Hangzhou, China. A boy named Xu Xian buys some of the tangyuan, eats it, and then returns to the man three days later and asks what was in tangyuan because he hadn’t been hungry since eating it. The man was actually one of the Eight Immortals, who then laughed at the boy, takes him to the edge of a lake, grabs him by his leg, and shakes him up and down until Xu vomits the tangyuan into the lake.
Swimming in the lake was a white snake that ate the tangyuan, which we actually immortal pills, and gained 500 years of magical powers. One day, the white snake saw that a begger had caught and wanted to gut a green snake, so she transformed into a woman and bought the green snake from the begger. The green snake was grateful and considered the white snake to be her older sister.
Eighteen years passed and the green and white snake decided to go to the Qingming Festival (Tomb-Sweeping Day). The white snake transformed both of them into young women. The white snake was called Bai Suzhen and the green snake Xiaoqing. At the festival by Broken Bridge, they meet Xu, who offers them an umbrella because it’s raining. This gesture ends with Bai and Xu forming a relationship and they eventually end up marrying.
While Bai and Xiaoqing were enjoying their time as humans in the festival, still in the lake was a tortoise. He had been there the day that Bai ate the immortal pills, but didn’t manage to eat any of them and became very jealous of Bai. So over the years, he had gained enough magical power to transform into a monk named Fahai. His anger against Bai was still strong as ever, so at the Duanwu Festival (Dragon Boat Festival), Fahai found Xu and convinced him to have Bai drink wine. Bai drinks the wine and transforms back into a snake in front of Xu, who dies from shock. So Bai and Xiaoqing travel to Mount Emei, (one of the four sacred Buddist mountains in China) to get a special herb to bring Xu back to life. They succeed and bring Xu back to life and luckily still maintains his love for Bai, even though she’s a snake.
From here Fahai is very angry at Bai and kidnaps Xu to separate them. Bai comes to save him by flooding the temple that he is being held in, killing many innocent people, and being pregnant at the same time. Unfortunately, she is still not able to save him, but Xu was able to escape and find Bai just before she gives birth to their son, Xu Mengjiao. However, this joy doesn’t last long before Fahai finds them and imprisoned Bai in Leifeng Pagoda (a five-story tower in Hangzhou) for 20 years. After this, Xiaoqing defeats Fahai, allowing for Bai to be reunited with her husband and son.
Now that the story is done, I wanted to share why I chose this topic. As I was reading up about the White Snake, I thought that it sounded familiar and that’s because it is. When I was a child, my parents bought me a movie called Panda and the Magic Serpent, which is the Japanese take of this legend. And doing a little more research had me learn that it was the first colored animated film from Japan as well. So, knowing that and having watched the film a dozen times as a child, I had to write on this topic. And just for old times’ sake, I included a picture from the film.
