"Li Huang"

The Tang-dynasty story collection Boyi zhi (博異志; "Vast Records of the Strange"), from the early 9th century, contains a chuanqi tale about a man named Li Huang (李黃) 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.^[2]

"The Three Pagodas of West Lake"

In the Ming dynasty, some time before 1547, a collection of early huaben tales was printed by Hong Pian (洪楩); in it was "The Three Pagodas of West Lake" (西湖三塔記), likely the first work to set the legend in the Southern Song capital Lin'an Prefecture, or modern Hangzhou. In this story, a man named Xi Xuanzan (奚宣贊) 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 stone pagodas in the West Lake and subjugats the creatures beneath them. Xi Xuanzan becomes a religious layman.^[3]

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

The story "Madam White Is Kept Forever Under the Thunder Peak Tower" (白娘子永鎭雷峰塔) in Feng Menglong's influential 1624 collection Stories to Caution the World began to portray the White Snake in a sympathetic perspective.^[4] Xi Xuanzan had become Xu Xuan (許宣), the Taoist exorcist had become a Buddhist monk named Fahai, and the White Snake now has a maid-servant (clothed in blue-green) named Qingqing (青青), who is a fish 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 the Leifeng Pagoda ("Thunder Peak Tower").^[4]

• 
  An illustration from Stories to Caution the World (1624).
• 
  An illustration from Leifeng Pagoda (1806).
• 
  An illustration from The Righteous Demons (1869 print).

Qing dynasty texts

The Qing dynasty saw major transformations of the legend thanks to Chinese opera and quyi (storytelling performances). While Huang Tubi (黃圖珌)'s 1738 chuanqi play Leifeng Pagoda is 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 (方成培) chuanqi play Leifeng Pagoda (1777); a thirteen-chapter novel (also Leifeng Pagoda, 1806) by Yushan Zhuren (玉山主人, "Master of the Jade Mountain"), and The Righteous Demons (義妖傳, preface dated 1809), a transcribed tanci text by Chen Yuqian (陳遇乾). In all of them, White Snake is presented as endearing and devoted; while Fahai's portrayal is more negative.^[5]

Xu Xian lends Bai Suzhen his umbrella on a ferry boat in West Lake. (Yun opera)

Xiaoqing steals 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 from Skanda during the Battle of Jinshan Temple. (Kunqu)

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

Prequel

Lü Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals, disguises himself as a tangyuan vendor at the Broken Bridge. 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. 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 of zhuangyuan (top scholar) in the imperial examination 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.

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's kasaya.

Modifications and alternate versions

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

The white snake was simply known as the "White Lady" or "White Maiden" (白娘子) in the original tale in Feng Menglong's Stories to Caution the World. The name "Bai Suzhen" was created in a later era.

Some adaptations of the legend in theater, 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 moved Heaven.
• A retcon 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.