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What is the Legend of the White Snake?

The Legend of the White Snake (白蛇传, Bai She Zhuan) is a Chinese folktale about Bai Suzhen, a white snake spirit who takes human form and marries a young man, Xu Xian, at West Lake in Hangzhou. The monk Fahai exposes her and imprisons her under the Leifeng Pagoda. It is one of China's Four Great Folktales.

Updated November 2, 2026

The white snake story in brief

In the best-known version, a snake spirit marries a mortal man and fights a monk to keep her family.

  1. The meeting. Bai Suzhen and her companion Xiaoqing, the Green Snake, meet Xu Xian in a spring rain at West Lake, near the Broken Bridge (断桥, Duanqiao). He lends them his umbrella. Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian marry and run a medicine shop.
  2. The warning. Fahai (法海), a Buddhist monk of Jinshan Temple (金山寺, Golden Hill Temple), tells Xu Xian that his wife is a snake.
  3. The Dragon Boat Festival. On Fahai's advice, Xu Xian gets her to drink realgar wine (雄黄酒, xionghuang jiu). She turns back into a white snake, and Xu Xian dies of shock.
  4. The herb. Bai Suzhen steals a sacred herb from the immortals and brings him back to life.
  5. The flood. Fahai keeps Xu Xian at Jinshan Temple. Bai Suzhen floods the temple to get him back, and many innocent people die.
  6. The pagoda. Fahai captures her in his alms bowl and imprisons her under the Leifeng Pagoda (雷峰塔).

Endings differ. In the tragic one, Bai Suzhen gives birth to a son and is then imprisoned, and Xu Xian becomes a monk. In the more widely accepted one, the son grows up to become a top scholar, makes a sacrifice before the pagoda, and it collapses, freeing his mother.

How the Legend of the White Snake changed over time

The story began as a warning about a deadly snake-woman and became, over several centuries, a love story with Bai Suzhen as its heroine.

Tang dynasty roots

The tale spread by word of mouth in the Tang dynasty (618-907). Researchers often point to the story of Li Huang in Gu Shenzi's Boyi zhi (博异志) as an early prototype. A young man spends three days with a woman in white and dies; a large white snake lived where he met her.

Feng Menglong's Ming version (1624)

The turning point in writing is "Madam White Kept Forever Under Leifeng Pagoda" (白娘子永镇雷峰塔, Bai niangzi yong zhen Leifeng ta), story 28 of Feng Menglong's collection Stories to Caution the World (警世通言, Jingshi tongyan), published in 1624. The setting is already Hangzhou, the hero is a clerk named Xu Xuan, and the maid Qingqing is a thousand-year-old carp spirit from West Lake. Fahai gives Xu Xuan the alms bowl and tells him to clamp it over his wife's head, and the story ends with her sealed under the pagoda. Fahai's parting prophecy says the white snake will come out into the world when West Lake runs dry and the Leifeng Pagoda falls.

Qing opera and after: a sympathetic Madame White Snake

Huang Tubi's play Leifeng Ta (1738) stayed close to Feng's version. Fang Chengpei's Kunqu opera of the same name (The Leifeng Pagoda), linked to the Qianlong Emperor's southern tours and first published in 1771, portrayed her love as pure. Sources credit Fang's script with the scene of stealing the herb, the flood of Jinshan Temple, and the son born to Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian. Later retellings made Xu Xian gentler and Fahai the antagonist; in Tian Han's Peking opera revisions of the 1950s he is a heartless oppressor.

Feng Menglong's story vs. the later opera versions
Feng Menglong (1624)Fang Chengpei (1771) and later operas
HeroXu Xuan, a weak clerkXu Xian, gentler and more loyal
CompanionQingqing, a carp spiritXiaoqing, a green snake spirit
Flood of Jinshan TempleNoYes
A sonNoYes
Bai SuzhenDangerous, to be fearedA devoted wife whose love is pure
FahaiNot evil; the story sides with himA servant of the Buddha for Fang, a villain by the 20th century

One of China's Four Great Folktales

The Legend of the White Snake is counted among China's Four Great Folktales, with Lady Meng Jiang, the Butterfly Lovers, and the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. China placed it in the first group of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.

The Leifeng Pagoda: collapse in 1924 and rebuilding

The Leifeng Pagoda is a real tower on the shore of West Lake; it fell on September 25, 1924, and a new one opened in 2002.

Qian Chu, king of Wuyue, had it built in 975. Over the centuries it decayed, and people took its bricks, which were believed to ward off illness or prevent miscarriage. Lu Xun's 1924 essay "On the Fall of Leifeng Pagoda" took the snake's side and blamed Fahai for meddling. Rebuilding began in December 2000, and the new pagoda opened on October 25, 2002, sheltering the ruins of the old foundations.

Modern adaptations of Madame White Snake

The legend has been retold many times on screen; two early-1990s versions are among the best known.

  • New Legend of Madame White Snake (新白娘子传奇, 1992). A 50-episode Taiwanese television series starring Angie Chiu as Bai Suzhen and Cecilia Yip as Xu Xian. It reached mainland China in 1993 and was rerun many times over the next two decades.
  • Green Snake (青蛇, 1993). A Hong Kong film directed by Tsui Hark, based on Lilian Lee's novel, which tells the story from Xiaoqing's side. Maggie Cheung plays the Green Snake and Joey Wong the White Snake.
  • Animated films. A Chinese animated White Snake series released installments in 2019, 2021 and 2024.

Where Bai Suzhen fits among Chinese snake spirits

Bai Suzhen is the best-known example of a snake spirit who earns sympathy, in a tradition where snake spirits were usually feared.

In Chinese tradition, animals could cultivate themselves over long years and take human form. The scholar Whalen Lai notes that such spirits could reach immortality, but evil ones only "as yao demons." Early snake-women belong to that dangerous class: the woman in white in the Li Huang story leaves her lover dead. Bai Suzhen keeps the marks of that type, the white clothes, the human disguise and the power over water, yet in Lai's words she "rose from being a heartless beast to being an ideal mate," a change he ties to her becoming a mother.

Questions about the Legend of the White Snake

Is Madame White Snake good or evil?
It depends on the version. The earliest snake-woman tales are warnings about a deadly seductress. Feng Menglong's Ming story keeps her dangerous. From Fang Chengpei's 1771 opera onward she becomes a loyal wife whose love is pure, and the monk Fahai turns into the antagonist.
Why does realgar wine reveal the White Snake?
Realgar wine was traditionally drunk at the Dragon Boat Festival to ward off evil, and in the story it is poison to snake spirits. When Xu Xian persuades Bai Suzhen to drink it on Fahai's advice, she loses her human shape.
Is the Leifeng Pagoda real?
Yes. It stands beside West Lake in Hangzhou. It was first built in 975, collapsed on September 25, 1924, and a new tower opened over the old foundations on October 25, 2002.
Who is Xiaoqing, the Green Snake?
Xiaoqing is Bai Suzhen's companion and maid. In Feng Menglong's version she is a carp spirit from West Lake. In most later versions she is a green snake spirit, younger than Bai Suzhen, and she helps bring the couple together.
Does the White Snake story have a happy ending?
Some versions do. In the tragic ending Bai Suzhen stays imprisoned under the Leifeng Pagoda. In the more widely told ending, her son grows up, becomes a top scholar, and makes a sacrifice at the pagoda that brings it down and reunites the family.

Read it as a story

Comicwell retells the legend of the White Snake in the present day, as a comic and as a novel.

  • The Rainbound City (comic). Su keeps an old apothecary in rain-soaked Seattle and keeps a secret: she is a white snake living as a woman. A tired charge nurse keeps finding his way to her counter. The first 20 comic chapters are free.
  • What the Rain Cannot Hold (novel, Book One). The same story told in prose. The first 10 novel chapters are free.

More legends: the nine-tailed fox, wuxia vs xianxia and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

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