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A Tale about Snakes
Long long ago, there was a white snake living in deep area of mountains. Year by year, the snake grew and continued to live for thousands of years, eventually becoming a magic snake.
One day, the snake changed itself into a nice woman. She gave herself the name Bai Suzhen. And she made a friend - Xiao Qing, who was also a snake, a green snake, who was magic, too.
According to the principle of Heaven, where Bodhisattvas lived, animals cannot change their selves into human beings and join human society, even though they were magic and they had a human figure. But Bai was not a common animal, she got permission from the god Kwan-yin to go into human society to repay a man who had saved her life in his previous life.
It had happened a thousand years ago, when Bai was still a little snake and was not magic. One day she was caught by a hunter. The hunter wanted to kill her and remove her gallbladder and at the very moment, a little child saw that the snake was in pain and offered to exchange the white snake for the goods he was carrying – in this way, the child saved Bai’s life and gave her back her freedom. Bai would not be magic now if she had been killed by the hunter.
Bai then found the little child in human society, who is now called Xu Xian, and they fell in love with each other. They married and opened a clinic. But there was a monk, whose name was Fa Hai, he thought that Bai, a snake, had no qualities to live in hunman society. And Fa Hai was also magic and strong, for he was an old and prestigious monk.
On a Dragon Boat Festival, Fa Hai divided separated Bai and Xu from each other. Bai got sad and crazy and mad, she begged Fa Hai for his husband, but Fa Hai said “No Way, you are just a snake, never dream to live with a human!”
Bai was in despair and she caused a very big blood to fight with Fa Hai. This blood also killed many innocent civilians. And Fa Hai then, as a monk who executes according to Heaven’s Rule, threw Bai into a tower called Leifeng Tower. Bai was forbidden to come out from the tower and she spent her time pacing back and forth. Even her friend Xiao Qing had tried to rescue her from the tower, but had failed and was nearly killed by Fa Hai.
Years past and Bai continued to be imprisoned in the tower, enduring a hard life……
As the years went by, Xu Shilin, Bai’s son, who was still a little child when his mother was put into Leifeng Tower, grew to be a Number One Scholar in the nation. Xu never forgot his mother in the tower, and when the Emperor chose him to be a minister, he took the post only if the Emperor would pardon his mother. Considering what Bai had done was simply because she wanted to be reunited with her husband and live peacefully, the Emperor thought the blood she caused was pardonable. With a pardon order from the Emperor, Fa Hai had to set Bai free from Leifeng Tower. And Bai lived with his husband and his son as well as her friend Xiao Qing again!
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