Movie Recommendation: Legend of the White Snake

I watched this movie back in August, and have been itching to write a review for it since the minute it finished. Due to a lot of life circumstances, I couldn’t find the time to do so until now. I recommend this movie just as strong as I recommend duck blood soup. It is easily the best movie I’ve watched since covid started.

This is a movie adaptation of the Chinese opera version of the story of the Legend of the White Snake, made for release on Chinese Youtube, for the purpose of promoting Chinese opera and raising more public interest and awareness about it. You can find it on actual youtube here:

Unfortunately, there’s no English-subtitled version. But despite this, I still recommend that everyone watch it. I’ll provide both a simple summary of the overall storyline and a detailed explanation of each scene, so you could try to follow along. And even if you don’t feel like it, this movie is well worth your time, even if you just watch it like a porno—skipping and fast-forwarding and just occasionally briefly pausing to enjoy the amazing costuming and fight choreography.

The CGI in this movie was made in an Australian studio, and you can tell that it has the same problem as all Chinese shows and movies I’ve seen—the CGI is at least two entire generations behind Hollywood. But nonetheless, with the budget that they had, they did an amazing job in creating an incredibly Chinese aesthetic. The background of a lot of scenes in this movie are adapted straight out of Chinese water ink paintings like this:

And on a big screen, it looks just absolutely gorgeous.

Every single costume used in the movie was created with in-period available dyes and dying techniques. So every costume you see was something that could’ve existed back in Song Dynasty, when this folklore theoretically originated. Every single headpiece was hand-crafted. Even the hairstyles are designed to allude to the main characters’ true identities as snakes—everything from their coiled hair, to the wavy, snaking bangs.

They ran into a problem when adapting the makeup, that original Chinese Opera makeup was designed for, you know, stage, and like all stage makeup, it looked ridiculous in front of movie cameras. But they wanted to preserve as many Operatic elements as possible, since the whole purpose was to promote Chinese opera, and so they didn’t want to just use ordinary movie makeup either. And the makeup artist for this movie had to design and develop a unique style of makeup that resembled Operatic makeup, but still looked natural enough for movie cameras.

And this has been rated by many Chinese movie reviewers as having some of the best choreographed fight scenes in the last couple of years. Note, by this, I don’t mean that they have particularly realistic fight scenes. There’s still a lot of fancy spinning and that thing where extras pointlessly stand around while people fight the main character one person at a time. But a lot of highly-skilled techniques are used, and it’s all performed by the actors and actresses themselves, with very minimal special effects and no stunt doubles. That’s almost never seen these days, because it takes so many years of training to pull something like this off, that most idol-turned-actors just don’t have the time or skills necessary. A lot of fights scenes in recent movies and TV shows have been heavily reliant on CGI, while the actors themselves just stand around and wave their hands in front of a green screen. It’s led to a lot of people saying that wuxia is dead.

And also, both female leads in this movie are breathtakingly beautiful.

So trust me when I say, I strongly, strongly recommend you at least take 15 minutes out of your day to pause and fast-forward through this movie even if you can’t stand Chinese Opera. Do it on mute if you’re really sensitive to high-pitch sounds. As someone who’s deeply into Chinese Aesthetic things, this whole movie is absolutely breathtaking. At the very, very least, at least watch the fight-scene starting from 1:02:00 to 1:08:33.

Alright. So. Legend of the White Snake was first written during the Ming Dynasty, telling the legend of Bai Suzhen, a snake that’s cultivated for a thousand years to achieve human form. In order to pay back Xu Xian for saving her life a thousand years ago, when she was just a baby snake, she approached Xu Xian in his current reincarnation as a poor orphaned scholar, and married him. Unfortunately, she is quickly noticed by Buddhist monk Fahai, who was jealous of their love/hated yaoguai because they killed his mom/was just an uptight asshole, and told Xu Xian that his wife was actually a snake demon. He told Xu Xian to feed Bai Suzhen realgar wine [supposed to be poison to snakes], forcing her to show her true form. Xu Xian was so terrified that he died of fear, and Bai Suzhen was forced to travel to the Divine Realm to steal divine medicine to revive him. But nonetheless, Fahai was still able to convince Xu Xian to come to the Jinshan Buddhist temple with him, where he imprisoned Xu Xian. Bai Suzhen and her sister, Xiao Qing, fight Fahai together and eventually use their magic to flood Jinshan, causing a lot of innocent deaths. This act brought divine punishment on Bai Suzhen. After she gave birth to her and Xu Xian’s child, she was sealed into the Leifeng Pagoda as punishment.

This story has been adapted dozens upon dozens of times, but out of all the adaptations I’ve seen, this version is absolutely my favourite. The name of this movie is, translated, “Legend of the White Snake: Qing”. And the Qing here means several different things—emotions, love, relationships. And it’s precisely why I love this adaption the most—it puts the emphasise of the story on the emotions. All the characters here are incredibly true to themselves. They value love. They value family. They care about each other, and they’re not shy about saying it. It doesn’t waste my time with 60 episodes of “will they or won’t they”. And all the relationships in this are incredibly heart-warming.

From the start of the movie to about 2:47 is just an opening theme, with a cut of later clips in the movie as well as a flashforward to when Bai Suzhen has been trapped in the tower, and Xu Xian is coming to watch her from outside. You can dip your toes to listening to Chinese Opera here, and decide if it’s your cup of tea.

The very next scene is a musical number with various young girls picking lotuses on the Xi Lake as we’re introduced to our main characters, Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing, who have just transformed into humans and are coming into the human world. This movie progresses through the four seasons as its story develops. Here is the first song number, that I’d like to call, “Love Is, Like, Real Nice.” (because none of the songs are named, I’m making up names for them as I go). I should probably also clarify here that Xiao Qing here is a green snake, sister to Bai Suzhen (a white snake), who has only cultivated for 100 years. A very cute little detail is that when she first appears around 4:24, she stumbles when trying to catch a butterfly because she’s not used to having legs yet.

After the song number, Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing have a conversation where Bai Suzhen sighs that the human realm is nice, because there’s love and relationships and families here. She explains to a curious Xiao Qing that the reason she came to the human realm is that she once met a man when she was a baby snake that she had a super hard crush on. Sure, he’s went through countless reincarnations and forgotten all about her by now, but she has been working hard these thousand years just so she can get human form to date him.

This is the first big diversion from most other adaptations of the story, and a change that I really like. Bai Suzhen here isn’t marrying Xu Xian to pay back a life debt, like she doesn’t even particularly like him, but he’s earned the right to have his laundry washed for the next 60 years. That story’s never felt very romantic to him. It just feels like this is a karmic debt she has to wipe off her balance before she can move on with her cultivation, like in Chinese fantasy novels. Legend of the White Snake: Feels Edition, true to its name, changed it so that there was no debt, no one’s life saved, she just actually really liked him and wants to date him for the sake of dating him.

At 7:23, Bai Suzhen makes a gesture where she both her index fingers side by side together, as she says, “I just want to get ~*~together~*~ with him.”

And Xiao Qing responds, “But we’re snakes. How can we be ~*~together~*~ with humans?”

And Bai Suzhen replies, “Just think about it.”

A look of realisation suddenly dawns on Xiao Qing’s face, but before she can say anything, Bai Suzhen quiets her with her fan while giving a knowing smile.

This is legit the most explicit discussion about sex I have ever seen on mainstream Chinese movies. And somehow, the Operatic context makes this the hottest thing I’ve seen all year.

And this leads into a short solo, all about Bai Suzhen’s fantasies about how wonderful romance would be.

At 9:49, we see our male lead, Xu Xian, come walking along while singing about being a hopeless dreamer. A note that almost every Chinese folk story is about a poor scholar. I presume it’s because they were all written by poor scholars.

Bai Suzhen exclaims at 11:25, “Look, Xiao Qing, that’s the guy!”

And Xiao Qing immediately goes, “Really? That’s him? HEY, YOU!!” before she’s pulled back.

Bai Suzhen admonishes her that that’s very rude, and Xiao Qing argues back, “You’re a thousand-year-old snake, not some snooty, pretentious person. Since you’ve found him, what’s the point in beating around the bush?”

And that’s something else I love about this adaptation—the focus on being true to yourself, speaking your mind, going after what you want aggressively and straightforwardly, not caring about societal norms or expectations. And it’s true—they’re snakes cultivating in the deep mountains for centuries. Why wouldn’t they be creatures of action and instinct? Why would they care about society’s rules?

Xiao Qing casts magic to call down rain, creating a circumstance where they can ask to share Xu Xian’s umbrella. And yes, by that I mean both of them. All three of them share one umbrella. With Xiao Qing just jumping around between the two leads like, “Hey~ What about me? Hey~ What about me?” this entire time as they first meet each other and fall in love at first sight.

This whole entire scene, she has just such a shit-eating grin like a little kid making her dolls kiss, that it kind of makes me want a Xiao Qing in every romance movie now, just standing 20cm away from the main leads as they kiss, being all like, “Ooooooh~ @.@“

As they descend from the bridge, Xiao Qing eagerly asks Xu Xian’s name and whether he has a wife. On getting the answer she wants, she eagerly offers that her sister is named Bai Suzhen, and also doesn’t have a wife!

This leads into the next song number at 14:25, set in Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen’s minds, as they fall in love. Let’s call this one, “Love at First Sight.” I really like the visual shorthands this movie uses to communicate that this scene isn’t happening in reality, by having the characters walk around on water, as they’re surrounded by lotus leaves on all sides. There are a lot of these visual shorthands throughout the movie, to communicate time skips and scene changes without having to add any extra scenes or voiceovers or break the Operatic style. At the end of the song, they “fall” back to reality.

Xiao Qing helpfully reminds them that the rain’s stopped, and Xu Xian bids his leave. Bai Suzhen stops him, saying, “Look, we’re clearly destined for each other. If you leave like this, how are we supposed to ever get ~*~together~*~? Why don’t you come over to my place, so we can Netflix and chill?” Xu Xian agrees, and they continue along, all while Xiao Qing is continuing to watch this from the woods like some kind of creeper. Bai Suzhen even calls down more rain, just so she can justify walking arm in arm with him again.

Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian walk off, completely having forgotten she even owns a sister. And Xiao Qing is forced to fly after them to catch up. This is seen by Fahai and his disciple on a boat, where the disciple cries, “Look, that guy can fly!” And Fahai is like, “Mind your own business, son.”

This isn’t the only version of Legend of the White Snake where Fahai isn’t an asshole, but I appreciate it nonetheless. The line he says here specifically, “She’s not a human. She has her own place to be.” actually comes from much later in the story, and is a part of what he uses to convince Xu Xian to turn on his wife—to say that Bai Suzhen has no place in the human world. The story moved the line to this place in the story and gave it the completely opposite meaning—there there’s no need to overly concern yourself with other people’s affairs.

And that begins the second chapter.

We skip all the dating bullshit, and at 21:24, cut straight to Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian’s wedding. And with a simple twist of their hand, we time skip forward again, to an unspecified amount of time after their marriage. There’s a brief song about how happy their married life is, as we cut in one of the prettiest transitions we’ve seen from the lake surface to Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian sharing a cup of tea together at home.

They share a conversation featuring a product placement about Longjing Tea produced at Xi Lake, when they’re interrupted by Xiao Qing. I’ll note at 23:35, as Bai Suzhen comes out of the room to greet Xiao Qing, the camera only focuses on her upper body, and she glides along like she’s riding on the hoverboard. That is peak form Ancient Chinese poise and posture—walking like you’re not even using your feet. I’m really impressed.

Xiao Qing complains that the Dragon Boat Festival is coming up, and everyone in town is burning mugwort and drinking realgar, and it’s giving her a headache to stay here, and urges that they should return to the mountains. Bai Suzhen explains that she’s married to Xu Xian now, so she can’t just abandon him. And Xiao Qing urges that Bai Suzhen is putting her thousand years of cultivation at risk like this, when she’s so close to success.

I’ll note during this whole scene, you can pay attention to the dangly bits on Bai Suzhen’s hairpiece and how, no matter how much she spins and moves around the room and sits down, they barely move at all. These headpieces were designed to show off the poise of an elegant noble lady in China, and keeping them so still is, again, really impressive.

At 24:53, monk Fahai comes to Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen’s house. He introduces himself, and immediately demands to know what Bai Suzhen is sneaking around in secrecy in the human world instead of cultivating her arts in the mountains. Bai Suzhen explains her admiration for human love and how she’s here to experience it for herself. Fahai then launches into a song about how human/snake love is wrong and furries need to GTFO.

To which Xiao Qing responds, “You’re not our real dad! You can’t tell us what to do!”

And Fahai is like, “But I can still beat you like your dad!”

A fight almost erupts as Bai Suzhen ushers Xiao Qing away. Fahai tells Bai Suzhen, “You can’t hide who you are from him forever. If you don’t tell him, I will. The only reason he agreed to marry you is because he doesn’t know you’re a snake. Once he finds out…it’s best if you leave right now.”

I’ll note that in recent years, with every adaptation of Legend of the White Snake, a new round of controversy has been raised on the Chinese internet, with people criticising Xu Xian, like, dude, you have the perfect wife. What does it matter if she’s a snake or not? Especially in versions of the story where Xu Xian deliberately poisons his wife with realgar wine, people call him a scumbag for betraying her like this after years of happy marriage and knowing that she’s pregnant with his child.

But all the controversy disappeared when someone said, “Okay, but if you found your perfect ideal partner, and were together with them for many happy years, and then one day, you found out that they’re actually a giant, human-sized cockroach that can transformed into a human, would you be okay with it?” And everyone universally was like, “Ohhhhhh, I get it now.”

After advising Bai Suzhen once again that God hates furries, Fahai leaves. I’ve seen a lot of Chinese movie reviewers talk about how well they’ve written the character of Fahai in this movie, that he’s motivated not by hate or jealousy or even righteousness. The entire drive of his argument is that it’s wrong to lie to Xu Xian about exactly what you are, and realistically, Xu Xian probably doesn’t want to be married to a snake, a perfectly fair point. He doesn’t attack Bai Suzhen. He doesn’t condemn Bai Suzhen. He merely comes to give her a warning that she’s not doing the right thing right now, and then he politely leaves her property.

He encounters Xu Xian returning from purchasing realgar wine at 30:00, and doesn’t say anything to him except to wish him good luck. In this version, Xu Xian didn’t deliberately buy the realgar wine to poison his wife under Fahai’s instruction. He bought realgar wine simply because that was what was on sale. This is a story with no truly bad people. Everyone is very well-meaning.

In the next scene, Xu Xian toasts Bai Suzhen, and it is a beautiful display of top-tier skill at “making people drink”, an invaluable skill if you’re planning to do business in China, secondly only to, “sleight-of-hand pouring the wine out pretending you’ve drank it”. It perfectly shows exactly why Bai Suzhen would take three continuous drinks of poisonous realgar wine knowing that it would hurt her, knowing that she’s pregnant.

The first cup, he says, “I’ve prayed before the Buddha before wishing for a good wife, and my wish has been granted. I am so happy to have met you. Here’s a toast to our love together.”

And as a character whose entire identity is her love of romance and love of Xu Xian, of course Bai Suzhen is more than willing to drink realgar to toast to her love.

As they drain the first cup, Bai Suzhen uses this opportunity to tell Xu Xian that she can’t drink anymore, because she’s pregnant. Which cues Xu Xian to exclaim, “But that’s all the more reason to make a second toast! A toast to the health and happiness of our child!”

So of course, Bai Suzhen is going to drink to that too.

And for the third cup he says, “My wife, I was an orphan, with no roots and no family, and now, you’ve given me love and the family I’ve always wanted. I swear to you here that I will always be true to you. I will love only you, and we will live the rest of our lives together.”

Throughout this scene, I’ll point out that the movie makes no efforts to hide that the wine bottle and cups are always empty. There’s no actual prop wine in them at all. This is actually a tradition left over from Chinese Opera, where all eating and drinking scenes are mimed out with no actual food or drinks on stage.

After the third toast, Bai Suzhen flees, and when Xu Xian comes looking for her, she sends him away to make sour ume soup. She collapses onto her bed, and when Xu Xian comes back again with the soup, he discovers a white snake coiled in his bed and keels over from shock. Please forgive the Final Fantasy XII-era CGI.

At 38:00, Xiao Qing comes looking for Bai Suzhen. She discovers Xu Xian dead on the floor, and a recovered Bai Suzhen grieves over a dead Xu Xian, when she recalls that there’s divine medicine on Mount Kunlun that can raise the dead. Xiao Qing tries to stop her, saying that she’s already injured by realgar, there’s no way she can successfully take the medicine. But Bai Suzhen is absolutely determined, as there’s no point to living without Xu Xian. She tells Xiao Qing to bury Xu Xian on the shores of Xi Lake if she doesn’t return in 3 days and leaves.

This begins Chapter Three, where Bai Suzhen is flying towards Mount Kunlun. She’s changed outfits, I think as another carryover from stage tradition, where this would be after an Intermission, even though in-story, I doubt she stopped to change clothes before setting off.

I’ll note a weird detail here that’s come up before when Xiao Qing flew too, that for some reason, in this movie, people fly lying down like western superheroes. Maybe it’s the limits of wire-fu? Or maybe that just looks more natural to a modern audience used to Hollywood? Because traditional Chinese Gods and sufficiently powerful mages fly standing up, perpendicular to the ground, like this:

We see Mount Kunlun here, with a deer and a crane guarding the magical mushroom here (no relation) which is the divine medicine. Bai Suzhen goes for the mushroom and is stopped by the crane guard.

She explains her circumstances and begs him for the medicine, and he refuses, saying that, “This reishi is the treasure of Mount Kunlun. It’s not meant to save the life of a mere mortal.” And they engage in the first of the impressive fight scenes of this movie.

During the fight, the deer almost falls off the mountain, and Bai Suzhen pulls him back at the last minute. And thus when the crane disarms her and has her at his mercy, it’s the deer who saves her at 47:00. He urges her to give the mushroom back. And she declares that she’s not afraid to die to save her husband. It’s just a pity that their child will die with her, and they can only be united as a family in the afterlife.

The deer pleads with crane to just give her the mushroom, saying, “It’s not right for the Gods to be without humanity or compassion either. Even when Master returned, I’m sure he’d prioritise saving a life too.” Lately, for some reason, every Chinese fantasy show likes to do a ~*~twist~*~ or some attempt at moral ambiguity by making the Gods actually the assholes and the demons the good people. It’s actually really nice to see proper Daoist and Buddhist morality portrayed in a movie, where the Gods are Gods precisely because they’re enlightened and merciful and kind.

49:15, Bai Suzhen is back and revives Xu Xian. Now that we’re away from Mount Kunlun, the fall aesthetics are in full display as Fahai and his discipline wait in a bamboo forest for a doubting Xu Xian to appear, now that he knows something’s up with his wife. Fahai is hoping to tell him the truth and have him break things off with Bai Suzhen, to put an end to their degeneracy.

Xu Xian appears, taking a walk through the bamboo forest, wondering to himself whether it was just a hallucination that he saw a snake and what he should do. He’s changed outfits too, to my favourite outfit of his in the movie. I really like the metallic sheen to that grey robe that makes it look almost silver.

Fahai appears at the end of the song to inform Xu Xian that his wife is, indeed, a snake, and although she meant well by becoming his wife, this is nonetheless against the will of the Gods and will result in inevitable catastrophe. Xu Xian begs Fahai to tell him what to do, and Fahai responds that the only resolution is to become a Buddhist monk also and become Fahai’s downline.

Upon hearing this, Xu Xian hesitates, “But my wife is so good to me! What should I do?”

And Fahai just walks up like, “Don’t believe everything you see. Now come with me.” And drags Xu Xian off.

This is a much nicer and less assholish charactersation of Xu Xian than running off to animal control and telling them to kill his wife the second he finds out she’s a snake. Here, at most, Xu Xian can only be blamed for not really resisting Fahai. And to be honest, I wouldn’t resist becoming a nun that much if I found out I’d been fucking a cockroach for years, so I don’t really blame him.

Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing comes along searching for Xu Xian, and at 54:48, she once again displays her gliding skills as she climbs up a bridge. It’s impressive every time I see it. I swear she floats up that bridge like it has an escalator installed in it.

Cut to Jinshan Temple, and at 55:23, Xu Xian once again expresses his reluctance, “But I don’t want to become a monk. I want to go home.” And is once again dragged along by Fahai. They really make a strong point in this movie that Xu Xian never really betrayed Bai Suzhen.

We enter Chapter 4 here, as Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing fly to Jinshan Temple. The Buddhist monks form a literal forcefield around Xu Xian with the power of belief~. With the start of a new chapter, Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing have changed outfits again. Bai Suzhen’s grey and red outfit here is my favourite of hers. Can’t really explain why. I just think it looks really badass.

Xiao Qing wants to start kicking ass right away, but Bai Suzhen stops her, saying that she wants to at least try talking it out first. And Xiao Qing protests, “Has a thousand years of cultivation only taught you how to compromise with grievances?”

And when they meet with Fahai, Xiao Qing launches right into it, “You asshole, going around ruining other people’s marriages! How about I ruin your temple!?”

Fahai explains to them that Xu Xian has totally become a Buddhist monk now, and if Bai Suzhen gets ~*~together~*~ with him again, she’ll incur divine punishment. And Bai Suzhen argues back, “If God doesn’t permit love, then why did he create me to be able to love?”

And Fahai is like, “God made you capable of loving, and God made you capable of letting it go too. You should turn back now.”

Bai Suzhen insists that she’ll never give up on Xu Xian, and Xiao Qing steps forward and says, “Ptui! It’s a perfectly consensual relationship. Who are they bothering? What business is it of God? What rule have they broken? What right do you have to judge them? Talk about a merciful God. I only see someone cruel and heartless here. Sister, let us flood the whole temple and see if they give Xu Xian back!”

I’m picking this dialogue out, because I’ve seen at least a couple of Chinese movie reviewers talk about this particular adaptation of traditional folk lore as using the socially unacceptable love between a snake and a human to express support for other socially unacceptable loves like LGBTQ. I have no idea if that’s what the director intended or not, but…yeah, the allegory is pretty strong.

Fahai threatens that if they hurt innocents for their selfish desires, he’ll bonk them with his stick. And Bai Suzhen is like, “If you wanna fight, we’ll fight, bro.”

The monks surround the duo, and we launch into the main fight scene of the movie, as Xiao Qing tells Bai Suzhen to go rescue Xu Xian while she deals with these monks on her own.

Bai Suzhen goes and finds Xu Xian, but is stopped from reaching him by a…um…pyramid of monks? This whole fight is amazing, but the most impressive part definitely starts at around 1:05:39, when Bai Suzhen starts using her sleeves.

I’ll remind you again, that there’s very minimal special effects here (only when she magically ties her sleeves around something), and no stunt doubles. She is actually throwing her sleeves around straight up, straight up, and so on, in real life. If you have no idea how hard that is, try it at home with two metre-long scarves. Remember, the ends of her sleeves can’t weighed. They’re just fabric. And yes, she is actually blowing out candles with swings of her sleeves in real life.

It takes an extraordinary amount of arm strength. Like, she might look pretty, but she could probably kill me with a slap.

And I’ll note that again, to make him a half-way decent romantic interest, during this whole fight, Xu Xian clearly feels bad for her and wants to leave. He’s just trapped by the forcefield. In fact, he begs the monk disciple to please let him go.

Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing decide if their Fighter levels aren’t enough, they’ll try out their Mage levels next at 1:09:29, and begin casting magic to flood Jinshan Temple. This scene is where almost all of the CGI budget of the movie went, and I’ve got to say, it’s honestly the best CGI I’ve seen in Chinese shows in my life (yes, even with now obviously questionable the particle effect on the water looks).

This whole section doesn’t need much explanation. But I will note that I’m very confused about the fiery wings that the monk obtains at 1:13:41. That’s…oddly Christian imagery there. Wonder what happened. I don’t recall any Buddhist figures with wings. Maybe I just don’t know enough Buddhism lore? I just think it would make much more sense if he grew like a dozen golden hands out of his back, and those pushed the water away.

Fahai returns the flood waters on Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing and defeats them. Meanwhile, in a flashback at the temple, Xu Xian is pleading, “My wife may be a snake, but she’s risking her life to rescue me. What more could I want with a wife like this?”

The monk asks, “Have you really thought about it? You don’t mind that she’s a snake?”

Xu Xian replies, “If people have no love, then they’re no better than snakes. And if snakes were capable of love, then they’re human too.”

In the present, Fahai reaches the temple to find everyone gone. His disciple explains that he let Xu Xian go, and Fahai says, “You were only doing what you thought was right. I can’t blame you.” Again, without seeing other versions of Legend of the White Snake, it’s hard to explain how much I love this properly all-loving, fairly-reasonable, not a Church Militant version of Fahai.

We come to Chapter five, final chapter of the movie, now with proper winter aesthetics.

Bai Suzhen has mysteriously changed outfits again. Even though Xiao Qing and Xu Xian haven’t? Okay, I admit, I actually have no idea what the logic of the outfit changes are. I’m starting to think they’re just trying to show off their costuming department.

Xiao Qing helps Bai Suzhen up and immediately launches into, “Humans are all bastards! We should’ve never come here!” and they have a brief conversation that beat for beat repeats when you’re trying to talk your friend into leaving her abusive boyfriend, and she’s being all like, “But I love him!”

Just like in other adaptations, when Xiao Qing sees Xu Xian again, she tries to kill him while telling him off for betraying her sister when Bai Suzhen’s never wronged him. It’s certainly very satisfying to see, in the context of other Xu Xians being a dickhole to Bai Suzhen. But it’s a little odd in this adaptation, when Xu Xian didn’t really do anything wrong, you know. He just got dragged along when he didn’t really know what was going on, and he tried to leave right away when he found out they were beating up his pregnant wife.

Anyway, despite this, I still absolutely adore this scene, because every time Bai Suzhen says the words, “Qing mei~~” (Sister Qing), Xiao Qing completely gives in. It’s such a great portrayal of their sisterly love and deep bond together. The first time is when Bai Suzhen asks to have a final word with Xu Xian before she leaves with Xiao Qing.

Bai Suzhen is like, “I hear you’re a monk now. What are you doing here?”

And Xu Xian is like, “I’m sorry for ever doubting in you. I’ll never do it again, I promise. Can we go back to the way we were?”

And at 1:24:05, we have a brief flashback to Xu Xian’s first meeting with Bai Suzhen a thousand years ago, where my husband swears he was played by a girl. If we go with the movie setting that this is when Bai Suzhen fell in love with him….her?? at first sight, then this movie might really be one big allegory for lesbians? Anyway, I’ve watched this section a dozen times and I genuinely can’t tell if that’s a girl or just a really girlish looking boy.

Back in the present, Bai Suzhen sings a song about how she’s very, very disappointed in Xu Xian and never wants to be ~*~together~*~ with him again. And Xu Xian returns a song about how he’ll totally buy her flowers and take her out and buy her drinks and give her kissies.

And that’s all it takes.

And Xiao Qing is to the side like, “Oh fuck, she’s falling for it again! Well, fine, enjoy your scumbag of a man. I’m leaving!”

And Bai Suzhen is like, “But Qing mei~~~ Don’t leave me~”

And that’s all it takes.

Xu Xian is still to the side being all I promise I’ll take care of you blah blah blah raise babies blah blah blah, and all I can think is man, this movie would be so much better if Xu Xian was a girl too. And then I remembered, in the most famous (and formerly best) adaptation of The Legend of the White Snake, the 1992 version from Taiwan, Xu Xian was in fact played by a woman. I’m definitely gonna have to rewatch that too.

But just as they finally decide to get back together as a family (and Xiao Qing), the skies turn dark as Bai Suzhen is trapped in a tower then and there for violating divine laws (by flooding Jinshan Temple and killing innocents? It’s hard to tell in this version whether innocents died or not.)

Bai Suzhen explains that originally, her punishment would’ve been complete destruction and removal from the wheel of reincarnation. But understanding the extenuating circumstances that she was in and how she was only acting out of love, God has commuted her sentence to merely 1000 years imprisonment in the Leifeng Pagoda, after which she can seek Xu Xian’s reincarnation and marry him again (presumably).

And that finishes the movie, with an epilogue where Xu Xian fantasises about being together with Bai Suzhen as he visits Leifeng Pagoda, in yet another song number on top of the lake. In the end, we even get to see a little glimpse of their child, who must’ve been born in prison, and then transported out to his father? In other versions, the Buddha waits until Bai Suzhen is done giving birth before imprisoning her.

I looked it up for you, by the way, and the Leifeng Pagoda was built in 975AD, and fell apart in 1924, not quite a thousand years apart.

Not that it matters, because in the original version of the fairy tale, when Bai Suzhen’s son grows up, he gets the top score on the national exams and makes an offering to the Pagoda, and she’s let out in honour of her son’s good grades. Yes. Seriously. I swear to God, China.

Wow, this got long. I understand that literally nobody asked for this. I doubt very many people were super interested in a blow-by-blow review of a Chinese opera movie. But I was just so excited about this movie, that I keep staying up at night thinking about it. I love every second of this, and I just really, really, really wanted to share it.

And I know this is already long, but at the very end here, I’d like to take a little aside to go on a small, small rant.

Ahem, Hollywood. Please pay attention. Bai Suzhen in this movie? The shape of her eyes are widely-acknowledge to be the most popular eye-shape among Chinese people—phoenix eyes.

I’ve seen a lot of people thinking that phoenix eyes are fundamentally just squinty, slanty eyes, and they’re not. Phoenix eyes are in the shape of a parallelogram. The middle part of the eye is still large and and bright. And it’s only the inside corner that slightly curves down, and the outside corner that turns slightly up.

This

Is very different from this:

You see what I mean?

It’s time to bring up this picture of Gu Ailing again, as the difference between when she has a Hollywood makeup artist and when she has a Chinese makeup artist. Like, Jesus, I know that probably, you just think that Asians are proud of their slanty eyes or something and it’s racist if you don’t exaggerate and embrace it, but please stop. Chinese people are thinking you’re super racist by giving all of your Asian actresses slanty eyes.

Look at Bai Suzhen in this movie:

You see the difference?

Okay, the Opera make up might be a bit confusing, so let me show you what phoenix eyes look like with normal make up:

Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say. I hope you enjoy this post, and I’m sorry it took me so long to finish it. See you tomorrow!