276
The fight between Lady White Snake and the monk Fa Hai leading to the flooding of Jin Shan
A popular and well-known opera, Bai She Chuan, tells of Lady White Snake's fall from grace and of her eternal imprisonment under a pagoda. It begins with a small white snake which, having been both virtuous and devout for many thousands of years, became immortal and could change at will into the form of a beautiful young maiden. As a snake she had been saved from death by a compassionate man and would have to repay the debt at a future date. She discovered that the man, in his latest incarnation, was a young scholar, Xu Xian, living in Hangzhou and after recruiting as her maid a small blue snake who too could change into a young woman, she returned to Earth having been warned by the Xi Wangmu, the Goddess of the Western Heaven, not to abuse her magical powers.
She met the young scholar and they promptly fell in love. She explained that she was the daughter of a deceased army officer and lived in some style in a large house, produced by her magic, on the lakeside at Hangzhou. They were soon married and set up a herbalist store in which all three helped prepare and sell the medicines. White Snake enabled her husband's recipes gain widespread fame by the addition of a small addition of a magical powder and their fortunes were made. However, Xu began to be suspicious of the personality and origins of his wife and went to consult his old teacher, the Abbot Fa Hai at his monastery, Jin Shan Si, on the island in the Yangzi and sought his advice. The Abbot too was suspicious and gave Xu a potion to add to his wife's drink which would change any non-human back into its true self. To his horror his wife was revealed in her herpetological form and he, petrified, dropped dead with fright.
The power of the potion soon wore off and when White Snake found that her beloved husband was dead she went off to the Western Heaven to obtain herbs of resuscitation. Her husband, now recovered, was unable to get over his experience and lived a life of nervous apprehension. He returned to his teacher and explained what had happened. The Abbot explained that he too feared for Xu as both his wife and her maid must be transformed snakes who could do him great harm. Xu remained in the monastery in hiding. His anxious wife set out to find him and was met by the Abbot who ordered her away.
She