The story of "The Legend of the White Snake" is almost unknown, a "Legend of the New White Lady" has become a childhood memory of many people, and the 2019 anime "White Snake Origin" has made bold innovations to the story of Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian, and finally achieved great success, taking some 470 million at the box office.
Considerable traffic also allows more people to see the commercial value of the white snake IP, creating a number of versions of Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian, mentioning the white snake, some people think of Zhao Yazhi's generous immortality, some people think of Liu Tao's gentle and moving, and may be the anime version of the infatuation and cuteness, in short, are beautiful.
But the beautiful truth is often cruel, the sun shines through the leaves will leave a darkness, when a story of beautiful illusion, often wrapped in a cruel to bloody truth, the white snake legend of this story, the same.
In fact, for the two snakes of Qingbai, the most impressive thing about Za Tanjun is the "Green Snake" filmed by Xu Ke, which has warmth, coolness, charm, and strangeness, and is completely about two snake demons, not snake immortals.
Comparatively speaking, this version of the white snake is actually closer to the original white snake image, but it has been much milder, in this version, there is no immortal, initiation, retribution, save people's story, the white snake found Xu Xian, it is completely to see Xu Xian looks good, and dazed, let her have interest, this can be said to be very in line with the traditional sense of the image of the demon.
The first record of the white snake first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, and there is a story in the Tang legend called "The White Snake", but this story is more different from the later White Snake Legend.
In this legend, there is no Xu Xian or Fahai, but there is a Longxi man Li Huang who is an official, and the white snake is not Bai Suzhen, who is bent on cultivating into an immortal under Mount Qingcheng, but a widow (of course, the identity may be false).
It is said that one day, Li Huang just arrived in Chang'an, finished his official business, and went to the market to hang out, only to meet a woman in white who was amazed by the heavens, and he was immediately overjoyed, and when he inquired around, he knew that this white-clothed woman was a widow without a husband, so he spent money to buy a cloth and sent it to the white-clothed woman's hand.
The woman in white took the cloth and invited Li Huang to sit at home, which was exactly what Li Huang wanted, and immediately went with joy, heard the family of the woman in white say that she owed money, and said at the moment that it was all right, she could help change the money, and gave the woman in white 20 yuan.
The white-clad woman left Li Huang to live for three days, doing her best to enjoy fish and water, and three days later, Li Huang returned home, suddenly in a trance, fell out of bed, and waited for the family to find that something was wrong, opened the futon, and found that Li Huang's body had become a pool of water, only one head was plucked, the family looked for the white-clothed woman, but found a deserted garden, hanging fifteen dollars on a tree, fifteen dollars under the tree, exactly thirty, that is, Li Huang gave to the woman in white.
This story can be said to have subverted the cognition of many people, and later the Song people carried out a second creation based on this story, and for the first time, the original form of Xu Xian and Fahai appeared.
In the story of the Song people, there is no Li Huang, but instead a person named Xi Xuanzan, "Xi" later evolved into "Xu", which is the male protagonist Xu Xuan in the story of Feng Menglong's white snake in the Ming Dynasty, which is the prototype of Xu Xian that we are familiar with.
The Song Dynasty story is called "The Three Pagodas of the West Lake", which tells the story of a commander named Xi Xuanzan, who is not good at wine, but likes to hang out. During the Qingming Dynasty, on a whim, I went to Qiantang Jiangxi Lake to play.
When passing by the broken bridge, seeing everyone gathered around and making a fuss, Xi Xuanzan couldn't resist curiosity, and also went up to look, and saw a woman wearing a plain dress, claiming to be surnamed Bai, living on the lake.
In this story, the white snake is not a person, she has a mother-in-law and a daughter, Xi Xuanzan met, is the daughter of the white snake (also nominal), the slave is still a good demon, because Xi Xuanzan saved her once, so the first time the white snake and the mother-in-law designed to bring Xi Xuanzan back to prepare to kill him, the slave saved Xi Xuanzan.
Unexpectedly, a year later, on the Qingming Festival, this mother-in-law came to the door again and arrested Xi Xuanzan, and the white snake wanted to dig up Xi Xuanzan's heart and liver to eat, and it was the slave who saved Xi Xuanzan, and Xi Xuanzan had the opportunity to see his uncle Xi Daoren, who was a Taoist.
Judging from the role of the Xi Dao people, it should be the prototype of the later Fahai, the Xi Dao people first gave Xi Xuanzan to eat the water of the spell, spit out the demon saliva, and invited a god to collect the family of three, the mother-in-law was an otter, the slave was a crow, and the white lady was a white snake.
Xi Dao created three stone pagodas and suppressed the three monsters in the West Lake, and Xi Xuanzan also followed his uncle to become a Taoist priest, and the end of a hundred years.
In this story, the white snake is still a bad person, Xi Xuanzan is an unlucky mortal, fortunately, he has a miraculous uncle, and the slave remembers a little of his kindness, otherwise he would have drunk and hated Huang Quan.
And Feng Menglong, the "sewing machine", dismantled and merged the first two stories, added a little change himself, and wrote the most famous fan novel "The Legend of the White Snake", which is also a version that we are relatively familiar with.
At this time, Xu Xian is not called Xu Xian, called Xu Xuan, when playing in Hangzhou West Lake, he met a white snake who called himself a widow, the white snake looks beautiful, although it is a widow, but Xu Xuan still can't help but be emotional, look, the ancients are also a standard face value party, but where this white snake looks ordinary, I am afraid that the story is another ending.
In Feng Menglong's story, Xu Xuan does not have any official position, the family conditions are a little worse than average, there is a brother-in-law who is on an errand in Yamen, and the image of the brother-in-law in the legend of the New White Lady first appears in this story. equally
Like the story of most talented women and young ladies falling in love with poor students, although the White Lady is not a rich lady, she did not dislike Xu Xuan's poverty, and even gave Xu Xuan fifty taels, letting him take money to propose to himself, which is even the bride price is intimately prepared for Xu Xuan, Xu Xuan is naturally very happy, and quickly go back to tell this good news to his sister.
Unfortunately, Xu Xuan did not know a sentence called "there is no white pie in the sky", Xu Xuan's brother-in-law found that the money Xu Xuan took was actually the official silver lost in Shao Taiwei's palace, and immediately killed Xu Xuan and arrested Xu Xuan to the official palace, really his brother-in-law, and did not give Xu Xuan a chance to explain.
Xu Xuan was exiled because of this matter, but he did not expect that the white snake and Qingqing (Xiaoqing prototype) chased after him, making up a lie that this was given to him by his ex-husband (the ex-husband was miserable), Xu Xuan believed it without any doubt, and the white snake was in love for a while.
Until Xu Xuan met a Taoist monk, the Taoist priest told Xu Xuan that his wife was a demon, Xu Xuan felt that it was reasonable, he was going to go back to test the white snake, but the Daoist was not good, not only failed to receive the white snake, but also almost let the white snake receive.
The white snake and Xu Xuan are still a happy couple, both say habitual stealing, habitual stealing, white snake is also a habitual thief, the last time he stole official silver, this time he actually stole clothes, causing Xu Xuan to be exiled again.
The white snake chased after it again, but this time encountered a monk, the Golden Mountain Temple Fahai, the Fahai Road is high and deep, the white snake knows that the enemy is not enough, and immediately and Qingqing overturned the boat and ran, from here you can also see the transformation of the status of the two families of the Buddhist Dao in the folk, the original Xi Dao people not only became the Fahai monk, but also added a new Daoist with mediocre skills, like a beam-jumping clown.
And said that this Xu Xuan is also lucky, it did not take long to encounter the amnesty of the world, Xu Xuan can finally return home, did not expect that the white snake caught up again, but this time Xu Xuan said that he would not be good with the white snake.
The White Snake didn't care what Xu Xuan thought at all, and threatened Xu Xuan: "If you listen to my words and rejoice, everything is rested, if you are born with an outer heart, teach you that the whole city will turn into blood and water, everyone will climb the flood waves with their hands, and their feet will step on the waves, and they will all die of death" (The original text of the Leifeng Pagoda in The White Lady Yongzhen), this is the source of the Water Flood Golden Mountain Temple on TV, but there is nothing that cannot help itself, although it is only a sentence, but the evil of the White Snake is revealed clearly.
What Xu Xuan could do, naturally, was to live honestly with the white snake, but in the end, Fahai struck and put the white snake at the bottom of the Leifeng Tower, and never came out.
Compared with the version that is now well known to the public, the most interesting point is that, just like the same story, one is the "truth" that everyone knows, the other is the real truth, and the things are all those things, west lake encounters, theft of official silver, the original body is scary, the water floods the golden mountain...
However, one is cold and cruel, one is romantic and poignant, the most tragic is probably Fahai, a good taoist monk, so he has become a stinky monk who specializes in marriage, even if it is the movie "Green Snake", it is only slightly corrected for him.