Changing Narratives: Adaptations of The Legend

of the White Snake

by

Yixi Wan

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts

Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Yixi Wan 2021

II

Changing Narratives: Adaptations of The Legend

of the White SnakeYixi Wan

Master of Arts

Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies

University of Toronto

2021

Abstract

China has a long and thriving tradition of folktales. These tales always abound with

ghosts and spirits. The legend of the White Snake is a widely known story that has

various adaptations from centuries. This paper will focus on this legend, discussing the

origin of the story, and especially pay attention to the novel adaptation Green Snake,

written by the well-known Hong Kong author Lilian Lee (Li Bihua), which shifts the

narrative perspective from Madam White to Green Snake, creating grounds for gender

and feminism regime narratives. To trace how subsequent adaptations have changed the

initial narration through the lens of feminism and colonialism, I’ll also focus on the later

film version by Tsui Hark in 1993 and the stage version of Green Snake, directed by a

female director Tian Qinxin.

III

Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Nikki Cesare Schotzko, for

her constructive guidance and constant encouragement from the first day of my MA

study. Second, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Xing Fan for being

my second reader, also for being super supportive as always. Last, my thanks would go

to our 2021 CDTPS MA cohort for creating the safest corner in the turbulent world. I

also owe my sincere gratitude to my family and friends who are now on the other side of

the ocean for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these

years.

IV

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements......................................................III

Table of Contents.........................................................Ⅳ

Introduction..................................................................1

1. Chapter 1: ...............................................................41.1 Folktales in China..................................................41.2 The origin of The Legend of the White Snake.......5

2. Chapter 2: ...............................................................112.1Lillian Lee and Hong Kong ...................................112.2 Lillian Lee’s Adaptation Green Snake...................13

3. Chapter 3:The Hong Kong New Wave and Green Snake............19

4. Chapter 4:“Love, hatred, and lust beyond redemption”...............26

Conclusion....................................................................32

Bibliography..................................................................33

1

Introduction

The legacy of traditional spirits’ stories continues to play an important role in

contemporary China, with structural similarities and themes that keep pace with a

changing society. As a Chinese girl, grew up with spirits’ stories and still indulges in the

legacy, I’m curious about how those folktales maintain their full vitality and vigorous

creativity. The Legend of the White Snake, known as one of the Four Great Folktales in

China, can be traced back to the sixteen century, with the most enduring popularity in

regional drama and vernacular fiction.

I want to start with my own storytelling about how the different modern adaptations

of The Legend of the White Snake, play a role in my growing process, from a child to a

young adult. It was around the year 2004, and I was about five years old at that time.

There was a popular TV series called New Legend of Madame White Snake. Although

this TV show was made in 1992 in Taiwan and was on China Central Television in 1993,

it was still a hit for the fabulous elements in this production, even in 2004. In this version,

the Green Snake firstly appears as a male. After a defeated fight with the White Snake,

he then transforms himself into a female form. The other thing in relation to transgender

is the male character Xu Xian was played by a famous actress Ye Tong. It’s literally rare

for a woman to play the male main character in mass media even today. In the 1990’s

people in China have strong discrimination and prejudices against transgender and

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queerness. However, my mom told me the male character was played by a woman when

I was at a very young age, and because of it, I just took it and never saw transgender as a

strange thing. I guess this was where it all started if my memory doesn’t lie.

The film adaptation Green Snake was released in 1993, there were many metaphors

in this version, and I couldn’t understand as a child. But that didn’t stop the film from

impressing me with the strong image style. It makes me realize that maybe you can not

explain what beauty is, but as long as you see it, you know it is, no matter the age and

other factors. When I was in high school, I became a big fan of Hong Kong films, and I

amused myself by watching the old films during the Hong Kong New waves. I watched

Green Snake again, and I was old enough to appreciate how great this film is. I’m not to

say it was my curiosity about the folktales that led me to study Chinese literature during

my undergraduate study, but I just feel like, in the unseen world, the fate of the gear was

open. I have no idea why I just encountered this story in my process of growth again and

again. One day I realized that it was this story itself and the whole adapting process with

a history stretching back through millennia rather than a specific adaptation that made

me so addictive. It established my aesthetic standard.

In the first semester, after reading Judith Butler’s “ Performative Acts and Gender

Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” It struck my mind as

the thread of the ideas hovering in my head for years. Then I thought I should seize this

opportunity to write a thesis about the changing narratives through The Legend of the

White Snake.

3

In the Chinese language, “she”, “he” and “it” have the same pronunciation while

the characters are different. (他 he, 她 she, 它 it). That is very interesting, which

means although we distinguish sexuality from animals, gender is only for human beings.

We do not distinguish animals’gender, so that's why we call them “it” instead of

“he” or“she”. You can tell a rank order from it in which animals’rank is lower than

humans.

This thesis will develop through four chapters. In the first chapter, I will discuss the

tradition of spirits’ stories in China and then trace the origin of The Legend of the White

Snake to examine the evolving process in ancient times. In the second chapter, I will

focus on the novel Green Snake and how social transformation in Hong Kong made an

effect on Lillian Lee’s creation. Chapter three is discussing Tsui Hark’s film version in

1993 and Hong Kong New Wave. In the last chapter, I will pay attention to how Tian

Qinxin’s stage version updated the theme of Green Snake, from “lust and desire” to

“Love, hatred, and lust beyond redemption” by changing the ending of Madam White

and the image of Fa Hai.

4

Chapter 1

Folktales in China

Folktales in China have a long and flourishing history. These stories always

abound with ghosts and spirits. You can hardly find a piece of work entirely out of

supernatural elements. One of the most common categories of folktales is about the

interspecies romance between the human and the nonhuman. In these stories, spirits

are called Yao (妖) or Yaoguai (妖怪), and are distinguished from ghosts which are

called Gui (鬼) or Guihun (鬼魂). The most significant distinction between them is

their origin: while spirits are always defined by their transformative abilities to

impersonate humans, ghosts are the physical manifestations of the souls of the

deceased.

During the Six Dynasties, 220 to 589CE, Ghost and spirit narratives emerged as

a literary genre of zhiguai (志怪 which means records of the strange events). With

the long evolution of formation, a new literary genre with longer and elaborate

narratives appeared in the Tang Dynasty, 618 to 906 CE, known as chuanqi (传奇

tales of marvels ). Love stories form a huge part of the volume, while those ancient

contexts also involve friendship, romance, and cooperation between species. These

classical Chinese texts not only have had an enormous impact on the growth of

Chinese literature but also the development of the genre of the ghost story in East and

5

Southeast Asia. In such stories, especially for the spirits who are shape-shifting

animals that can impersonate humans, are always killed brutally by the exorcists

because of their ability to transfer the life force of the living males through the sexual

union to promote their practice. Although the supernatural heroines rarely show evil

intentions, instead, they showing incredible endurance and perseverance in holding

back their brutish nature for a beyond-species love. There is a firm boundary between

the human world and the supernatural world. Spirits are ultimately seen as dangerous

outsiders who must be exorcised. This legacy of traditional literature still occupies a

central position in contemporary China with structural characteristics and shared

themes.

The origin of The Legend of the White Snake

Their modern reincarnations can be divided into reproductions (where

contemporary stories are written in a style closely resembling older texts),

utilizations (where contemporary authors make use of their audience’s

knowledge of the old texts), and hybridizations (where contemporary stories

alter older texts, introducing elements of local folklore, modern settings, or

other literary influences).1

Katarzyna Ancuta

1 Katarzyna Ancuta, “Strange Ghosts: Asian Reconfigurations of the Chinese Ghost Story,” in The RoutledgeHandbook to the Ghost Story (Routledge,2018), 260-61.

6

The legend of the White Snake, with the constant evolving in print, for the stage,

and the screen, has had much to do with the connection of social practice and the

topic of sexuality the story engages, which definitely belongs to the category that

Ancuta states.

The origin of The Legend of the White Snake can be traced back as far as the

ninth century, though the story has gone through multiple afterlives mutated into

various narratives. The earliest known record encounter between a man and a snake

spirit is in the classic tale called Li Huang (李黄 ), which is included in Extensive

Record of the Taiping Era (Taiping guangji 太平广记 ), in the 10th century, is

regarded by a group of scholars, as the origin story of the White Snake. In the early

versions, the protagonist who is a transformed snake spirit is written as the symbol of

wildness and even cruelness. The snake spirit is depicted as an unruly seductress who

kills male partners attracted to her after a sexual encounter to transfer the life force.

The young man Li Huang is reduced to a puddle of water at the end of the tale. The

similar plot later emerges both in the literary genre chuanqi (传奇 tales of marvels )

during the Tang Dynasty, 618 to 906 CE, and vernacular fiction huaben (话本) and

zhanghui xiaoshu (章回小說) from the Song Dynasty, 960 to 1279 CE. While some

scholars hold a contradictory view that the plot of the encounter between the snake

spirit and male character can not be easily seen as the positive evidence of the origin

of this legend. As Idema states:

From the sixteenth century onward, however, we encounter stray remarks

stating that a snake demon had been captured under Thunder Peak Pagoda

7

on the southern side of Hangzhou’s West Lake. 2

It is not until Feng Menglong’s version from the Ming Dynasty, 1368 to 1644

CE, that the image of the snake spirit turns into a virtuous wife and caring mother

that we are familiar with today from merciless perpetrators. Feng Menglong (冯梦龙,

1574–1646) is a Chinese literati who, in“Stories to Caution the World” (Jingshi

tongyan 警世通言), collects this legend. Although, before Feng Menglong published

his collection in the 17th century, The Legend of the White Snake as folklore had

already been interpreted in local operas and was already popular onstage. Different

from literature, as a kind of folk culture, the dramas of the Song Dynasty, 960 to

1279 CE, and the Yuan Dynasty, 1279 to 1368 CE, deal with a wide variety of folk

customs popular with the audience. Entertainment became the main pursuit of their

ideals, which promoted the plot twist in the literary genre.

Feng’s 1624 version, named Madame White Imprisoned Forever under Thunder

Peak Pagoda (Bai niangzi yongzhen Leifengta 白娘子永镇雷峰塔 ), cements the

central elements of the modern version’s plot and characters as well as the names of

the main characters which were adopted by the later versions. The snake spirit

transformed into a young lady dressed in white. In doing so, the snake spirit claimed

her surname as Bai(白), which also refers to the color white. Her servant girl is called

Xiaoqing (小青) or Qing’er (青儿). Qing in Chinese refers to a dark color between

blue and green. In some contexts, the word is translated as “black” or “blue”, while

2 Wilt L. Idema, “Introduction,” in The White Snake and Her Son: A Translation of The Precious Scroll ofThunder Peak, with Related Texts (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2009), xii.

8

the most common one is green.

This version begins with an encounter between a young male pharmacist, called

Xu Xuan (许宣; in later versions, Xu Xian 许仙), and a beautiful young rich woman

named Madame White (Bai Niangzi 白娘子 , or Bai Suzhen 白素贞) by the West

Lake3 on a rainy day. Xu Xuan lends his umbrella to Madame White. They soon fall

in love with each other and become engaged. After their marriage, Xu Xuan runs a

herbal medicine shop with Madame White’s help. Over time, when the Dragon Boat

Festival 4comes, Monk Fa Hai, who possesses the power of exorcism, discovers that

Madame White and her servant are not a young woman, but rather a transformed

nonhuman white snake spirit and a black carp spirit. Xu Xuan is frightened out of his

wits when he learned the truth and then turns to the Abbot Fai Hai for help to escape

from Madame White and her sister Little Green (Xiaoqing 小青 or Qing’er 青儿).

Ultimately, Madam White is imprisoned by Monk Fa Hai forever under the Thunder

Peak Pagoda.

Feng Menglong’s collection had dropped from circulation for hundred years. It

3 West Lake is a symbolic sight in Hangzhou. It has been a famous tourist destination since the Tang Dynasty andwas made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011 for its natural beauty and historic relics. West Lake isprominent in Chinese culture, influencing Chinese poetry, paintings, and folklore throughout history.

4 Chinese festivals are agriculture-oriented and secular rather than religious, making them very different fromWestern festivals. The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the four major festivals in China. The other three are theSpring Festival, the Clear and Bright Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Dragon Boat Festival hasvarious names, including the Double Fifth Festival, the Duanwu Festival, and the Zongzi Festival, which is on thefifth day of the fifth lunar month. There are many versions of the origin story for this festival, while you can tellthe three most well-known versions from how people name the festival. The custom of eating zongzi and paddlingdragon boats on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month came from mourning over the patriotic poet Qu Yuan’sdeath on that day during the Warring States period. Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC) committed suicide by jumping intothe Miluo River after hearing the defeat news of the Kingdom of Chu. People in that area, hearing this new,paddled dragon boats hurriedly to save Qu Yuan. Some of them fed big fish with zongzi to protect Qu Yuan’sbody from devouring. It is still commonly believed in China that the fifth day of the fifth lunar month is theevilest and most unlucky day during the year. People will drink realgar wine to keep poisonous creatures at bayand fumigated herbs to keep diseases away. To ward off ghosts, calamus and wormwood will be placed aroundhouses.

9

was not until the early twentieth century that this book was rediscovered. Later

adaptations made only modest changes and depicted Madame White as less the

antagonist than the protagonist, demonstrating, as Taryn Li-Min Chun notes,

“Narratively, dramatic adaption tends to humanize the demonic Madame White by

making her more compassionate toward the people around her.” 5 In later versions

of White Snake, the focus shifted from emphasizing the evil interaction between

spirits and humans into true love and karmic ties.“This follows a broader consensus

that the nature of Chinese stories about nonhuman others changed over time, from

cautionary to humanizing narratives.”6

In later versions of the tale, for instance, Madame White frightens Xu Xuan to

death by accidentally showing her true form. To save Xu Xuan, she takes a

dangerous journey to procure a magical herb, after which Madame White and Little

Green start a war calling on all the water creatures of West Lake to battle against the

Abbot Fai Hai and his followers so Madame White and her sister can take Xu Xuan

back home. Madame White even becomes pregnant and gives birth to a fully human

child named Xu Shilin (许士林 )in the end, which is seen as the recognition of

Madam White’s practice in humanity. Some scholars regard these plots as additions

made by actors to pander to audiences’ desire for less tragic.7

5 Taryn Li-Min Chun,“Mediated Transgression and Madame White: Technology and the Nonhuman inContemporary Stagings of a Chinese Folktale,”Theatre Journal 71, no. 3(2019):308.

6 Ibid.,312-13.

7 For a closer analysis of the change of plots in actors’ version of The Legend of MadamWhite, see Wilt L.Idema’s“Introduction” (2009, xvii). Dates and reproductions of the preface text are provided in Guo Yingde,Ming Qing chuanqi zonglu (Collected register of Ming-Qing chuanqi) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe,1997, 1010–11, 1019–20) and translated in Idema, The White Snake and Her Son (2009, 143–49).

10

The change of the snake spirits’ image and plot are closely relevant to a specific

social value system. Just as Hutcheon articulates:

An adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context—a time

and a place, a society, and a culture; it does not exist in a vacuum. Fashions,

not to mention value systems, are context-dependent. Many adapters deal

with this reality of reception by updating the time of the story in an attempt

to find contemporary resonance for their audiences. 8

The Buddhism belief is in full flourish in China during the Tang Dynasty, 618 to

906 CE, leading to society promoting asceticism and abstinence. During the Song

Dynasty, 960 to 1279 CE, Neo-Confucianism emerged as the new moral principle

and later was upgraded to official philosophy by the ruling class, who made it the

main content of the imperial competitive examinations. The appeal of

Neo-Confucianism beard a striking resemblance to the Buddhism belief in the Tang

Dynasty made the continuity of asceticism and abstinence. To play a propaganda role,

The Legend of the White Snake in these two dynasties, emphasized the rigid

boundary between man and snake spirits, as a caution to people avoiding indulging in

desire, and men, in particular, should be alert to the temptation of beauty.

It was not until the Ming Dynasty, 1368 to 1644 CE, with the development of

industry and commerce, the feudal society changed from a natural economy to a

commodity economy. The public sectors of the civilian population grew sharply and

on the impact of literature. The animateness of the citizen stratum adds vitality to the

8 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group,2006),142.

11

folk culture and thus affects the direction of literary creation. Popular literature

breeds elegant literature, and in the meantime, it also cultivates numerous readers of

the citizen stratum, even develops the modern literature market.

Little Green does not appear as the supporting role until Feng Menglong’s 17th

-century version. This change of the legend is regarded as an expansion of the script,

providing more dimensions of interpretation. In modern adaptations, the core plot of

the folklore broadens from the romance between human and non-human to female

companionship, as well as queer desire.

Chapter 2

Lillian Lee and Hong Kong

Hong Kong, in this sense, represents one of the earliest formed migration

departing ports. Departing from Hong Kong, generations of Sinophone

populations sailed afar, as did their languages, cultural habitus and

lifestyles.9

K. J. Wang

Contradictory with most modern versions of The Legend of the White Snake,

9 Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music,( Singapore: SpringerSingapore Pte. Limited, 2020):10.

12

Lillian Lee’s novel Green Snake deconstructs tradition by reshaping the main

characters and their relationships, which made this work out of the ordinary. Lee is

even bolder to shift the theme behind to lust and desire. It is difficult to comprehend

such a transition without the illustration of social transformation in Hong Kong and

how does it affect Lillian Lee’s creation.

Hong Kong was ceded by Qing Empire and established as a British Empire

colony as a result of the Qing Empire’s defeat of the First Opium War in 1841. Under

the non-interference policy of the colonial government, Hong Kong as a port city

seized the opportunity for development in the tumultuous times. During the

1970s-1980s, Hong Kong underwent dramatic changes. This decade marked a new

chapter in Hong Kong ’ s social formation for successful transformation both

economically and politically. The historian John Carroll states that people in Hong

Kong coincided on their tendency towards the redefinition of cultural identity and

native consciousness of Hong Kong, for the economic boom, the transition from

manufacturing to the service industry, improvement of public infrastructures, cultural

hybridity, and closer ties with China with the end of Cultural Revolution. Carroll also

points out Hong Kong’s ambivalence that China is playing the role of a mirror:

whereas Hong Kong was experiencing an economic boom and fast growth of society,

mainland China, however, awaited development in ruins after a destructive decade of

the Cultural Revolution. Such a stark contrast boosted Hong Kong people’s

self-esteem and their sense of belonging.10

10 For a closer analysis of Hong Kong’s modern history, see John Carroll’s book: A Concise history of Hong Kong.Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

13

Lillian Lee (Li Bihua, 李碧华 )11 is a well-known Hong Kong author and

screenwriter, specializing in adapting well-worn folktales into totally different

versions while still maintaining the inherited characters and plot structure, employing

bold plots using clear and vivid language. Her revisions which are

consumerism-driven, blur the line between popular culture and high-brow culture,

which ideally reflects Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity in relation to China. Lillian

Lee’s works contain feminine consciousness, revealing women's social standing in

both traditional Chinese and Hong Kong society. Because of this, her works are

frequently adapted for film, television, and theatre by a group of directors.

Lillian Lee’s Adaptation “Green Snake”

As Linda Hutcheon writes, “most often adaptations are not backdated but rather

are updated to shorten the gap between works created earlier and contemporary

audiences”.12 Lee rewrote the legend of the White Snake into the 1986 novel Green

Snake in which Lee revises the relationship between Fahai, Xu Xian, Madame White,

and Little Green, making it a more complicated, triangulated one. In Green Snake,

Lee does not set the narrative perspective from White Snake, as the original folklore

11 Li Bihua(in Mandarin), Lee Pik Wah(in Cantonese), Lilian Lee(in English). The names of characters and creatorsalways have several different versions when translating into English due to the difference in pronunciationbetween Mandarin and Cantonese. Also, because of the complicated distribution system of Hong Kong films, thefilms often have some different endings with completely disparate names. Here, I try to use the most commonlyaccepted names.

12 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 146.

14

does; instead, Lee shifts the narrative perspective to the younger Green Snake. In the

novel, Green Snake as the narrator explains the mission of being a spirit:

“我的喜怒哀乐生老病死,都在西湖发生, 除了死. 我的终身职业是“修

炼”,谁知道修炼是一种什么样的勾当? 修炼下去,又有什么好处? 谁知道?

我最大的痛苦是不可以死.已经一千三百多年了,还得一直修炼下去,伊于

湖底? 这竟是不可挑拣的......”

My emotions, my births, my aging process, and sickness all happened by the

West Lake, except death. My lifelong career is to practice, but nobody

knows what kind of thing it is? Nobody knows the benefits of keeping

practice. The lowest depth of misery is not being able to die. It has been

more than 1,300 years, and I have to continue practicing at the bottom of the

lake. We have no choice in fate as the spirits.13

As a spirit, a lower-status existence of the world, being immortal is a punishment.

They need to keep practicing and suffer from all the miseries of mankind, especially

of love to get the chance of reincarnation after repaying their karmic debt.

“你要天天接受太阳的炙晒,令自己的血变暖;你要用针线把分叉的

舌头缝合,令它变短;你要坚持直立,不再到处找寻依凭;你要辛勤劳碌,不

再懒惰......还有,你要付出爱情,否则交换不到什么回来.”

You have to expose yourself to direct sunlight every day to warm your

cold blood; You have to sew your forked tongue together with a needle and

thread to make it shorter; You have to keep standing upright and stop

looking for support; You must be industrious instead of being indolent...And,

13 Lilian Lee (Li, Bihua), Qing She (Green Snake), (Beijing: Xin Xing Publisher,2013), 3-4. All the original citationsof novel contents from Green Snake are in Chinese. The English citations are translated by the author of thisarticle.

15

you have to sacrifice love, or there will be nothing back. 14

In the tradition of Chinese folktales, during their practice process, spirits can

choose to be a male or a female when they shift into the human form. Therefore, the

means by which each snake spirit learns how to be a woman not only involves

biological sex but also gender construction. Judith Butler suggests that gender

identity is a “performative accomplishment,” compelled by “social sanction and

taboo”.15 Gender constitution is a process that means “ to be a woman is to have

become a woman, to compel the body to conform to a historical idea of ‘woman’”16

In the novel, Madame White is the more experienced spirit, with her thousand

years of practice, and holds the view that once she has a love for life, she would

become as noble as a person. Little Green, the younger spirit, follows Madame White

into the transformation into a woman just for fun. To become a woman and to fall in

love, for Madame White, is to fulfill her fantasy of becoming noble; Little Green

simply follows Madame White, choosing to do like the more experienced spirit does.

Thus the process Madame White undergoes as a woman is also the process of

learning the daily behaviors under the constraint of her gender.

White Snake’s intention to be a woman is pure. There is a conversation between

White Snake and Green Snake:

“平凡的爱, 与关心. 嘘寒问暖, 眉目传情. 一种最原始的感动.”

14 Ibid., 13.

15 Judith Butler.“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”Theatre Journal 40, 4 (1988):520.

16 Ibid., 522.

16

“平凡好吗?”“小青, 我们自身也已经够复杂了.”“但——你不过是一

条蛇.” 她听了这话, 默然片刻. 是的, 五百岁的蛇, 地位比一千岁的蛇

低, 但一千岁的蛇, 地位又比才一岁的人低.不管我们骄傲到什么程度,

事实如此不容抹煞.人总是看不起蛇的.我们都在自欺.”

“All I want is the most ordinary love, being caring and attentive, a

primordial move.” “ Is it good to be ordinary?” “ Qing, ourselves are

complicated enough.” “ Nonetheless, you are just a snake.” There was a

brief silence after she listened to my words. That’s true — a

five-hundred-year-old snake has a lower status than a thousand-year-old

snake, while a thousand-year-old snake has a lower status than a

one-year-old child. No matter how proud we are, we can not deny the facts.

People are always disdainful of snakes. Both of us are deceiving ourselves.17

At the very beginning stage, Madam White and Little Green meet a monk who

just resumes secular life telling them if they want to be a human, they need to

practice lust to have warm blood. At this time, it starts raining in West Lake. Madam

White encounters a handsome pharmacist named Xu Xian lending his umbrella to her.

Madam White is fascinated by Xu Xian’s good-looking and falls in love with him

soon, even though she does not actually know what love is. Her behaviors at this

stage, just pure imitation. Madam White just tries to make the body become its

gender “through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidate through

time. ” 18

17 Lilian Lee (Li, Bihua), Qing She (Green Snake), (Beijing: Xin Xing Publisher,2013), 13.

18 Judith Butler.“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”Theatre Journal 40, 4 (1988):523.

17

At this stage, White Snake has only incomprehension about what human love is,

confusing the concepts of love and lust. The desire for love motivated her

transformation into a woman; however, misunderstanding what love is, White Snake

compares a romantic encounter to that of a snake meeting a plump feathered bird in

the autumn woods. It is not surprising, then, that when she first meets the handsome

Xu Xian on a rainy day, she persuades herself to fall in love with him immediately.

At this phase, it’s all about lust and desire.

In this gender construction process, Little Green is a less experienced snake

spirit than her older sister, showing more rebellion against social conventions for

women. This provides grounds for a regime within the grounds for a feminist

interpretation, following, as Hutcheon argues, that “transcultural adaptations often

mean changes in racial and gender politics. Sometimes adapters purge an earlier text

of elements that their particular cultures in time or place might find difficult or

controversial”. 19

Madam White learns about human emotions and sentiments from Xu Xian,

while Little Green learns those lessons from her sister. When Snake experiences

jealousy and the feeling of particular possession in her romantic relationship, Little

Green also experiences the same as she makes way for White Snake’s romance. The

central theme of “lust and desire” dominates White Snake’s narrative, and, like a

mirror, reflects on Green Snake’s development.

Because of Madam White’s hasty marriage to Xu Xian, she is not able to share

19 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 147.

18

her time and her passion with Little Green as before. Green Snake even needs to

move to a separate room from the couple, which makes her feel lonely in her lack of

understanding of the constraints and rules of being a human. Thus, Green Snake

pursues her own romance, just as White Snake did. Rather than grasping the essence

of being a human, Green Snake only imitates the older spirit. If Madam White has

married the first man she meets, so will Green Snake. Green Snake then tries to

seduce the abbot Fai Hai she meets at the Buddhist Ceremony, which results in a

chain reaction of disasters eventually culminating in a love quadrangle. Fa Hai in the

novel shows his infatuation with Xu Xian, which makes him possessed by the Devil

to exorcise Madam White. The relationship between Madam White and Green Snake,

as well as Fa Hai and Xu Xian, lead to the emergency of queer feelings.

Written in 1987, it is unavoidable for Lee to put her own identity anxiety into the

novel. Lee recreates the story by lengthening the lives of the two snake spirits and

placing them in the contemporary world to experience the Cultural Revolution

(1966-1976). In the novel, Faihai appears as a Buddhist-Confucian moral compound

showing the legitimacy of Confucian morality. It is Fa Hai that impersonates Madam

White under the Thunder Peak Pagoda. The Thunder Peak Pagoda does not collapse

until that time which is also seen as the metaphor of Confucian morality’s collapse.

The Confucian morality for legitimacy is the root of the modern Chinese nation,

which is distinguished from the transcendental theological basis of modern Western

countries.

19

Chapter 3

The Hong Kong New Wave and Green Snake

In point of fact, only a handful of film industries in the world have been

able to follow Hong Kong’s example of closely integrating its film industry

into the entire spectrum of prosperity achieved by its society.20

Sek Kei

Hong Kong as a frontier that is far away from the nation’s cultural center, had

been seen as a cultural desert for centuries. However, as K. J. Wang states:

because of this ‘deserted’ nature and later the colonial government’s

laissesz-faire governance that a particular type of culture—a Sinophone

Hong Kong/South China cultural circle—was born, and since the post-war

period, this cultural circle has prevailed across global Sinophone markets. 21

At an early age, before the Sino-Japanese War, there were two main streams of

Chinese film production. One was in Shanghai, producing Mandarin-speaking films.

The other was in Hong Kong, producing Cantonese-speaking movies. As wars and

political turmoil decimated Shanghai’s thriving cultural industry, a huge number of

filmmakers moved to Hong Kong after the fall of Shanghai in 1941, which brought

20 Sek Kei , Collection of Sek Kei film critiques 4: From prosperity to crisis (石琪影話集四: 從鼎盛到危機),(Hong Kong Subculture Publishing, Hong Kong, 1996), 54.

21 Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music,( Singapore: SpringerSingapore Pte. Limited, 2020), 14.

20

vitality and vigor to the southern cultural center. The film industry in Hong Kong

obtained a long-term development.

Hong Kong New Wave (which dates from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s)

is inspired by the legacy of exuberance, daring, and avant-garde techniques of the

French New Wave, also in terms of the exploration of individualism and publicizing

personality brought by the generation of filmmakers in French New Wave film

movement. A new generation of filmmakers among the major figures such as Ann

Hui (许鞍华 , The Story of Woo Viet 1981, Boat People 1982 ), Tsui Hark (徐克 ,

Green Snake 1993, The Butterfly Murders 1979 ), Allen Fong (方育平, Father and

Son 1981), and so on, were educated abroad who possessed new attitudes toward

their society and cinema and returned to Hong Kong to start their careers in the

competitive television industry.

As mentioned in the above chapter, Hong Kong in that period experienced an

economic blast-off but at the same time, the rapid development has taken its toll. The

dramatic rate of economic growth, as well as improvements in education, during the

postwar period, bringing to light the serious social problem of overpopulation as a

result of the rapid growth of immigration from the Mainland. This ushered in a new

epoch for Hong Kong New Wave directors to create something new by piercing into

the core of the society — the political and social contents. At this period,

“Chopsocky” also known as kung fu films occupied the mainstream of the film

market between the late 1960s to 1980s. Besides, the previous generation directors

21

before New Wave were pursuing films for pure amusement or indulging in the

nostalgia for the fragmented imaginative“China”. During the 70s, the audiences’

aesthetic fatigue has reached an unbearable situation and were hungry for something

new, which created opportunities for the crop of talented youths to gestate a new

chapter for the film industry in Hong Kong.

During the 1970s, the television industry in Hong Kong was increasingly

prosperous with fierce competition between three commercial television stations and

one government-funded station, known as the “Hong Kong television war”. Such a

social and industrial condition provided those overseas educated directors with

opportunities and extensive practice to try new topics. Thus, when this group later

devoted themselves to the film industry, they radically reshaped the landscape of

films in Hong Kong, showing a keen concern for immediate local social issues.

As Gina Marchetti wrote in the chapter “The Hong Kong New Wave” which was

included in the book “A Companion to Chinese Cinema,” noted that “the new waves”

are always associated with “wider political, social, and economic developments” and

always in conjunction with a new generation with a fresh perspective on new

technologies and taking advantage of the specific avant-garde movement in the other

arts.22 What represented in Hong Kong’s Film New Wave was adopting new editing

techniques and synchronized sound to create a more personal and fresh approach at

the time. Instead of upsetting the history of Hong Kong film and overthrowing the

22 Gina Marchetti,“The Hong Kong NewWave.” In A Companion to Chinese Cinema, (Oxford, UK: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2012), 96.

22

existing film industry order, the New Wave directors are distinguished as the “new

wave” by their distinct passion for “film artistry, creative sensibility, and social

consciousness”. 23

The main theme of the New Wave films shows societal and humanistic

sensibility, as well as the local concern. Besides, Cheuk summarized that New Wave

directors also portrayed writings of women and their identity as the emigres, such as

Ann Hui’s film Song of the Exile (Ke Tu Qiu Hen, 客途秋恨 1991) and The Story of

Woo Viet (Hu Yue de Gushi, 胡越的故事 1981). Homecoming (Sishui Liunian, 似

水流年 1985) made by Yim Ho. Another prominent component in New Wave is the

restruction of Chinese legends by adopting special technological effects.

It is generally accepted that Hong Kong New Wave movement combines two

periods. The “second wave” of Hong Kong film was appeared after 1984, marking as

starting to attract more attention from the overseas film festivals. Also because “ The

Sino-British Joint Declaration”, which was a treaty signed on 19 December 1984 by

the British government and Chinese government, declared the governance and

sovereignty of Hong Kong returning to China after 1 July 1997, led to a shift of New

Wave films’ theme. “In the shadow of 1997, films and research were produced to

echo the anemia, uncertainty and anxiety about nation, identity, history and

destiny.”24

23 Cheuk Pak Tong, Hong Kong New Wave Cinema : (1978-2000) , (Bristol, UK ;: Intellect. 2008), 18-19.

24 Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music,( Singapore: SpringerSingapore Pte. Limited, 2020), 88.

23

During this period, ghost thriller films flourished, symbolising the feeling of

“lost in history” and “lost in identity” of people in the transforming era, by showing

the ghosts’ and spirits’ lost past and the unbridgeable gap between human and

nonhuman. Those post-colonial implications are also filled with Lee’s novel Green

Snake, as well as Tsui Hark’s later film adaptation. And beyond that, Lee’s works

don’t explicitly focus on feminist topics, but implicitly challenge traditional gender

binaries, which is bound to the remarkable coherence of Tsui Hark’s works.

Tsui Hark as the leading role of New Wave was born in 1951 in a big Cantonese

family of 16 children and raised in Saigon. After eight years living in America,

majoring in film, Tsui Hark returned to Hong Kong in 1976 working in the television

industry as other directors. Witnessed anti-Vietnam War movement and Baodiao

movement 25 (保钓运动 , Defend the Diaoyu Islands movement) in America, Tsui

Hark showed a deep desire to express the theme of nationalism as well as the

post-colonial implications.

Tsui Hark’s Green Snake on the basis of the novel doesn’t make much change to

the plot. Combining with science fiction elements, Tsui Hark creates an intense

stylishness of images to expresses the theme of desire and lust. In most versions,

Abbot Fai Hai is described as an old enlightenment monk with, as well as a strongly

powered exorcist. Even the evilest and powerful demons and spirits are afraid of his

power. The exorcism in modern versions of The Legend of White Snake is always

25 Baodiao movement is a social movement that lasting for a long time, at multiple locations to assert Chinesesovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands. Diaoyu islands are located in the East Chian Sea, northeast of Taiwan andsouthwest of Okinawa. The United States ended its occupation of Diaoyu Islands in the 1970s, initiating thedispute between China and Japan.

24

regarded as so excessive that splits Xu Xian and Madam White.

Simultaneously, it is not surprising that in Tsui Hark’s film version, he places Fa

Hai at the center of the story, placing more emphasis on Fa Hai’s masculine features

to stress the lust and desire theme. Tsui also deletes Lee’s account of the lives of the

two snake spirits during the Cultural Revolution. Hutcheon considers that

“performance media present the greatest challenges for adaptations across cultures

and not only because of the presence of paying audiences— on-site and ready to

respond with incomprehension or anger” ,26 which is significant to the directorial

choices Tsui makes. Tsui’s intentional omission of the Cultural Revolution is

regarded as the result of the complexity of Hong Kong’s political circumstances at

that time, with the “1997 hand-over” soon approaching. It was not a wise choice to

talk about this sensitive issue during that period. “Whether an adapted story is told,

shown, or interacted with, it always happens in a particular time and space in a

society”27 and sometimes adaptions choose to make a change just to“avoid legal

repercussions”.28

26 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 150.

27 Ibid., 144.

28 Ibid., 146.

25

Figure 1. Little Green (played by Maggie Cheung) eventually acquires the ability

to shed tears like a human, only to realize how limited and exclusive the human

world can be, which is seen as her successful emergency into humanity. Screenshots

from the film Green Snake: Tsui Hark. 1993.

Figure 2. Madam White (played by Joey Wong) and a statue of Buddha.

Screenshots from the film Green Snake: Tsui Hark. 1993.

26

Chapter 4

“Love, hatred, and lust beyond redemption”

The 2013 stage version of Green Snake is adapted and directed by Tian Qinxin,

one of the most accomplished female directors in China. A theatre director at the

National Theatre of China, Tian Qinxin is known for The Orphan of Zhao, 2003 and

Martyrs' shrine: the story of the reform movement of 1898 in China, 2015. Following

Tsui Hark’s film adaptation, Lee invited Tian Qinxin to re-create her novel as a stage

adaption after seeing her works. Lee expected the stage version to be more mature

and upgraded version, focusing on the perspective of female development. Lee and

Tian Qinxin completely different cultural backgrounds reflect Hutcheon’s

consideration of how new cultural contexts necessitate fundamental revisions of an

original text:

Adapting across cultures is not simply a matter of translating words. For

audiences experiencing an adaptation in the showing or interacting modes of

engagement, cultural and social meaning has to be conveyed and adapted to

a new environment.29

Tian Qinxin’s Green Snake opens with a dignified Buddhist Ceremony as the

abbot Fai Hai and his following monks marched through the aisles to the stage,

29 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 150.

27

accompanied by “Spring Song.”30 Immediately after, Fai Hai wryly explains that this

ceremony was fake. Fai Hai then narrates the trajectory of the origins and

development of The Legend of White Snake. As Fai Hai exits, the two

protagonists—the snake spirits— “roll out”, imitating snakes' crawling. In doing so,

Tian Qinxin highlights her radical revamp of the original legend, as well as of Lee’s

novel. Rather than a story about “desire and lust”, Tian Qinxin’s version is a story

about “love, hatred, and lust beyond redemption”.(Tian and Li, March 21–24, 2013;

Hong Kong Arts Festival program).

Tian Qinxin’s stage adaptation inherited the early stage of the two snakes’

gender construction. Madam White holds an extremely simple intention coming to

the human world: she wants to become one of the virtuous young women, achieving

happiness by living with a beloved husband and rearing their children. As a snake

spirit with a 1000-year-long practice, Madam White has more experience with how

the human world operates. Thus, Green Snake, with a 500-year-long practice, holds

an implicit trust in White Snake’s authority. Green Snake’s intention to become

human emerges from her faith in White Snake. Initially, Green Snake is as pure as a

newborn child, confused about the doctrines and positions in the human world. When

White Snake proposes that she will transform into a woman’s body to experience life

in the human realm, Green Snake responds with a kind of spirit’s innocence: if White

30 “Spring Song” is a song from the distinguished Chinese composer He Xuntian’s Buddhist music album“Paramita.” “Paramita” is a Buddhist term translated as “perfection” or “completeness.” This album as a musicceremony made its’ debut with 1,300 performers on Oct.25th, 2002 for commemorating the reconstruction ofLeifeng Pagoda in Hangzhou, China. The lyrics of “Spring Song” was adopted a zen poem fromWumen Huikai (无门慧开), a Chinese Zen master during the Song Dynasty. “Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,summer with the breeze, winter with snow. When idle concerns don’t fill your thoughts, that’s your bestseason.”

28

Snake wants a husband, she could transform into a man’s body. However, White

Snake refuses Green Snake’s idea and clarifies that what she wants to own is a real

human male to achieve this. Green Snake transforms into White Snake’s little sister

and they imitate swearing, like humans, that they will never leave or forsake each

other in life or death.

Figure 3 Poster of Green Snake, produced and performed by National Theatre of

China.

29

Figure 4 The two snake spirits are not so familiar with standing by two legs at the

beginning stage of the transformation. Allegra in Project: Crosswalk. Toronto,

Ontario. Screenshots from video: Alice Roxburgh. 2020.

Figure 5 The special version performing at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival used a

large-scale water screen and digital projections showing the scene of Little Green

transforming into a giant snake on stage. Photo: Tian Qinxin’s Theatre Studio.

30

Figure 6 To rebuild a typical Chinese water town, the version of Green Snake at the

Wuzhen Theatre Festival made it a site-specific performance that took place on a lake.

Photo: Tian Qinxin’s Theatre Studio.

Tian Qinxin’s adaptation emphasizes women’s introspection of their fate and

how to find their way out of lust. Thus, she is trying to focus on the discussion of the

way out after the tangle of desire by depicting the process of the two snake spirits

learning to be human.

In Tian’s version, the second stage of Madam White’s gender performance is the

time her fantasy of the human world is broken. When the Dragon Boat Festival

comes, people usually drink realgar wine to protect themselves from evil spirits.

Realgar wine is a traditional Chinese alcoholic drink consisting powdered of realgar.

Madam White holds the view that her one thousand years’ practice can protect her

from the effects of the realgar wine which possibly would let her lose the magic and

expose her original form as a giant white snake. Unluckily, her original form is

31

exposed frightening Xu Xian to death. After she risky stealing the magic herb to save

Xu Xian’s life, there is nothing she can make up for. Thus she chooses to walk into

the Thunder Peak Pagoda to cut off the lust and desire. After the gender performance

process, she has learned what being a female has to suffer and ultimately, she makes

her own choice, much brave than a real person.

The other change in the stage version is the image of Fa Hai, from a rigid

exorcist to a devout monk. Tian Qinxin, in her 2013 stage adaptation, makes the

Abbot Fai Hai an inexperienced man who is so young that love is something outside

his experience. In this version, Fai Hai is a typical youth full of idealism. In Tsui

Hark’s 1993 movie adaptation, Tsui Hark puts Fai Hai at the center of the tale to

show his masculine features as an action hero. Tian Qixin preserves this shift, adding

Fai Hai’s narrative perspective as well, though Tian emphasizes Fai Hai’s role as a

dedicated monk pursuing the top realm of Knowingness with Buddha Dharma as the

deconstruction of the masculine. In addition to Fai Hai, Tian adds more figures as

portraits of males in the Song Dynasty. This change is also seen as a bantering

adaption. Tian vogues their masculine features characterizing them as more feminine

than masculine by showing their weakness and timidity. Tian also puts more

emphasis on the speciality of The Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty is a special

period in Chinese history. It was a time when the ruling class advocated for the arts

rather than military force.

32

Conclusion:

The legend of the White Snake as an evolving folktale, with time going by,

shows more profound layers, which makes it an interesting research topic from

focusing on the changing narratives. Adaption is a word referring to the process,

referring to the result as well. By tracing the origin of The Legend of the White

Snake, focusing on the ancient adaption process, we can better understand where this

story comes from. The novel Green Snake and its film version and stage version

show how different cultures can make an effect on the adaption. However, with the

limited length, I didn’t do a close analysis on the film and stage version of the novel.

33

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