The final rendition of Liang Luo’s monograph “The Global White Snake” was wholly different from what she originally intended. Luo, Professor of Chinese Studies and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University, recalled, “My initial thought is, I’m going to write about the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English language productions to the extent possible from the late 19th century to the present.” She elaborated, “But that has taken a really new shape, because the pandemic worsened existing xenophobia, fear and oppression in terms of the minority population.” In her lecture on Feb. 9, Luo shared the works that inspired the global digital archival project that became “The Global White Snake.” The lecture was sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and co-sponsored by the International Studies Program, the Department of Chinese and Japanese, Drama, Film and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.
“The Legend of The White Snake” is a Chinese oral folk tale that has been passed down for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In the story, a white snake named Bai Suzhen incarnates into the form of a woman and forms an interspecies romantic relationship with a handsome young man named Xu Xian. In the human realm, Bai Suzhen also meets a green snake, Xiao Qing, who also transforms into a human. Eventually, the Buddhist monk Fa Hai discovers White Snake’s identity; she then returns to her snake form and is imprisoned by Fa Hai. While earlier iterations of the tale take on a moralistic lens that paints Bai Suzhen as a demoness who seduced a good-natured young man, later versions of the story, beginning in the 18th century, foreground the profound love between the two protagonists.
While we typically think of legends as preserving a historical message, Luo’s observations highlight that the meaning within folk tales like “White Snake” are continuously remade over time according to shifting societal values. Amidst the global rise of racist attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic, Luo came across various creative productions that adapted the Chinese legend of The White Snake into a symbol of resistance. Referencing scholar Wilt Idema, who wrote “The White Snake and Her Son,” Luo commented, “If you are assuming these stories embody a single, unchanging, essential meaning, you’re wrong.”
But what is it about this ancient Chinese story that has attracted contemporary Anglophone audiences? To Luo, the identities of White Snake and Green Snake are powerful symbols of the experiences of minority groups living in the western world. As she put it, “Living as a resident alien in the human realm, the snake woman has always been subject to fear, suspicion, suppression and exclusion.”
After orienting the audience with the background of her project, Luo introduced some of the western projects that inspired her book. She shared the Singaporean-American librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs’ 2010 opera “Madame White Snake,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2011. In 20th century Chinese film adaptations of the legend, Green Snake was positioned as a background character. In Jacobs’ iteration, the Green Snake is elevated as the narrator of the legend who has the power to tell White Snake’s story as well as her own. Thus, the story took on a new shape, centered on the sisterly bond that emerged between the two snake-women who are ostracized by the human world. “They became the new female protagonists of this very male-centered, didactic story from the past,” Luo observed.
Additionally, in line with Chinese operatic traditions, Green Snake in Jacobs’ opera is performed by a male artist. Thus, Jacobs further subverts audiences’ expectations of the conservative gender dynamics in the original story and creates a space for minority representation that extends to queer and trans identities. Luo concluded, “You can see the legend really came to argue strongly for the tolerance of the strange, the uncanny, the human frailty, but also understanding yourself as you are, and there is something to be said about found family rather than first family.”
The 2013 retelling “Legend of Lady White Snake” by Indian-Canadian director Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri refigures the image of the White Snake. In Pal-Chaudhuri’s iteration, White Snake, portrayed by Daphne Guinness, is dressed in an extravagant gown of shiny snake scales designed by the late Alexander McQueen that took inspiration from Chinese and Indian fashion. By displacing the legend from its original cultural context, Pal-Chaudhuri’s work imagines White Snake as a global symbol of feminist, queer and environmental activism.
After the success of her opera “Madame White Snake,” Jacobs co-founded White Snake Projects, a Boston-based organization that produces operas with a social justice focus. The organization took off after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 because it provided a digital platform for creatives to convene and speak out against the rise of racist and discriminatory rhetoric that followed the pandemic. In particular, White Snake Projects hosted the online event series “Sing Out Strong: Decolonized Voices,” which spotlighted short-form opera produced by immigrant students in the Boston area. Luo’s archival project chronicles the powerful artistic and digital afterlives of the legend of the White Snake as a dynamic symbol for global activism.