This is the story of a snake spirit who desperately wanted to taste the pleasures of human love.
White Snake - the fairy Bai Suzhen - has practiced Buddhism for thousands of years. She is able to change into a beautiful girl and she longs to taste the pleasures of human love.
One day, on a sightseeing trip at West Lake with her maid Xiao Qing, a green snake, she falls in love with a young man named Xu Xian at Broken Bridge.
They get married and live by practicing medicine with the help of Bai's magical power.
Fa Hai, a monk at the Gold Mountain Temple, ruins their happy life by telling Xu his wife is the incarnation of a white snake. He takes Xu to the temple.
When Bai goes there to look for her husband, the monk warns her to flee, but she becomes angry and fights him.
Bai conjures up sea water to flood the temple while the monk invites soldiers from Heaven to retaliate.
Hearing the fierce fighting outside the temple, Xu realizes that Fa Hai has prevented him from reuniting with his love by imprisoning him in the temple, and he manages to escape.
Bai is pregnant and exhausted from fighting with Fa Hai. She retreats to West Lake, where she meets Xu again at Broken Bridge.
Her maid, Xiao Qing, wants to kill Xu because he left Bai and sought shelter with Fa Hai. Bai stops her but reproaches her husband for wavering in his love for her. Xu feels guilty and begs his wife to forgive him, and she does. In the end, the three are all reconciled.
(China Daily 05/09/2001)
