Once upon atime, a white snake that had 1000-year magic power admired Hangzhou, and decided to transform into abeautiful lady and settle down on the west lake. White snake changed into avery beautiful girl named Bai Suzhen.Her good friend, Green Snake, also became a lovely maid, named Xiao Qing. Theycame to the West Lake for a visit. Early in the spring,it was rainy most of the time. There came a young man named Xu Xian with anumbrella. White Snake let it rain and she came to Xu Xian for a shelter. XuXian lent his umbrella to her. A bout was then in sight. So they took a boatand had a view of the west lake.
White Snake andXu Xian fell in love and soon got married. They started a medicine shop forliving. Fa Hai, an old monk warned Xu Xian that his wife was a snake, and itwas improper for a man to marry a creature. He suggested Xu Xian a way to findher real self, a festival alcohol drunk on the Dragon Boat festival. On thatday,Xu Xian bought the festival drink to celebrate the day and asked White Snake todrink with him as told by Fa Hai. White snake agreed and finished a cup, andsoon she changed into her original form—a big white snake, Xu Xian saw her,just died of fright.
White Snake washeartbroken to find Xu Xian lying dead beside the bed. But she knew that acelestial herb on the Kunlun Mountain could restorehim to life. She flew to the Kunlun Mountain to steal thecelestial herb. The life of Xu Xian was restored. Later Xu Xian was detained bythe monk Fa Hai in the temple, white Snake along with Green Snake chased to thetemple and fought with Fa Hai to save Xu Xian. But she was weak with baby.Finally, White Snake can’t defeat Fa Hai and had to go bake to practice magicpower.
Although Xu Xianwas imprisoned by Fa Hai, he missed his wife very much and regretted taking FaHai’s advice and separated the family. So he fled from the temple, when he cameto the Broken Bridge, he met White Snake and had areunion. So it is a saying that the Broken Bridge is not broken, butthe heart of the White Snake is broken. This is why the ordinary small bridgebecame a most popular one in
Shortly afterthey reunited, White Snake gave birth to a boy, named Xu Mengjiao. Fa Hai withgold Buddhism bowl stolen from Buddha covered White Snake and suppressed herunder Leifeng Pagoda. This is the reason why Leifeng pagoda is so famous.
18-year later,the son of White Snake grew up healthily and studied very hard, he got thefirst place in the Imperial Examination. Together with his father and GreenSnake, he came to Leifeng pagoda and built a platform to spend three daysworshipping his mother and his filial respect moved the heaven. Finally thepagoda collapsed, White Snake got free and the family got back together again.At this moment Buddha turned up, he took back the gold bowl. Monk Fa Hai was sofrightened of being punished that he jump to the West Lake, and squeezed intothe shell of a crab. Guess what? Crabs used to walk forward and backward, butnow with the monk living inside, they had to walk sideways.
