The Chinese dragon (loong) year of 2024 is winding down. In January, the Chinese will celebrate the Chinese New Year, welcoming the Year of the Snake. The Chinese have a more nuanced view of snakes than the negative connotations held by Westerners. They are called "little dragons," and according to ancient mythology, the Chinese people’s creators were a mixture of humans and serpents.
Many people in China consider snakes lucky charms, and in legends, snakes are often thought of as creatures who would return the favour by bestowing prosperity upon humans.
Below is a cultural thread elucidating the snake's depiction throughout Chinese mythology, literature, and art.
Nüwa (女娲) and Fuxi (伏羲): the half-snake creators of humans and Chinese civilisation
Nüwa (Picture 1), a lonely Chinese goddess, created humanity for companionship. She made clay figurines. Because Nüwa crafted them by hand, these clay figures rose to social nobility. Since crafting each figurine required much time and effort, Nüwa mass-produced humans by dragging a rope through the mud. The story explains the strict social structure in ancient China.
As a result of the Gonggong's (Chinese water god) destruction of Buzhou Mountain, which served as a pillar to hold the sky, the Great Flood swept over the world, wreaking untold suffering amongst humankind. Nüwa felt sorry for the humans she had created and attempted to mend the sky. She collected five coloured stones (red, yellow, blue, black, and white) from the riverbed, melted them, and used them to patch up the sky; the sky (clouds) has been multicoloured since then. She then slew a gigantic turtle and severed its four legs to serve as new pillars to sustain the sky. Nüwa completed her mission by scaring away the wild creatures, putting out the wildfire, and stemming the flood with a mountain of ashes from the burned reeds, and the world returned to its previous state of peace.
Nüwa Mends the Heavens (女娲补天) is a well-known legend in Chinese culture. The courage and wisdom of Nüwa inspired the ancient Chinese to conquer nature. It has become a favourite subject of Chinese poets, painters, and sculptors and has inspired many poems, novels, paintings, and sculptures.
Legend has it that Nüwa married her brother Fuxi (Picture 2). Fuxi and Nüwa have human heads but serpent bodies because their mother Huaxu (华胥) fell pregnant unexpectedly after treading in a footprint left by the thunder god Leigong (雷公). The duo invented music, hunting, fishing, domestication, cooking, and the Cangjie (仓颉) system of Chinese characters.
Ancient Chinese mythology seems to have a fondness for snakes, with both Nüwa and Fuxi possessing serpentine bodies, in contrast to Western myths that view snakes as evil creatures.
They also reflect social conventions, as seen in this Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) painting (Picture 3) of Fuxi (right) and Nüwa (left) discovered in Xinjiang's Astana Cemetery. Nüwa is shown in the photo clutching a compass, while Fuxi is shown with a ruler. "Compass and ruler" (规矩) translates to "standards" in Chinese.
The Great Flood and the nine-headed snakes appear in Chinese and Western myths, which is quite interesting.
In Greek mythology, Hercules killed the nine-headed serpent Hydra (Picture 1). In Chinese mythology, the nine-headed snake monster Xiangliu (相柳 Picture 2) is poisonous and causes devastating floods and damage as the minister of the water deity Gongong.
The ancient love story between the Lady White Snake and human
The White Snake Legend is a Chinese legend about a romance between Xu Xian (许仙), a man, and Bai Suzhen (白素贞), a female snake spirit. With a history spanning over centuries, it is considered one of the Four Great Folklores of China. Lady White Snake is well-known in China, and her story was made into a successful 1990s television series.
The current version of the story is based on Chinese writer Feng Menglong's influential 1624 “Collection Stories to Caution the World”, in which a white snake, saved by a cowherd boy, decides to become human and repay the favour. The white snake, accompanied by her blue-green maid-servant, a fish spirit, discovered and wedded her saviour, Xu Xian.
Lady White Snake used magic to steal money from the local government and help her husband start his clinic. She and her husband helped many poor people, but they were despised by a Buddhist monk named Fahai. Fahai deceived Lady White Snake into drinking Realgar wine, exposing her snake form and terrifying the husband to death. In anguish, Lady White Snake journeyed to the underworld, battling the guards to retrieve her husband's soul and resurrect him.
Despite the husband's resistance, the monk persisted in his efforts to separate them and eventually brought him to his temple. In her hysterical wrath, the Lady White Snake summoned a deadly flood. As a result of her transgression, the monk eventually imprisoned her under the Leifeng Pagoda, also known as the Thunder Peak Tower. She remained beneath the tower for a long time, but she was finally allowed to return to her family after her son became a Zhuangyuan, a title bestowed upon the scholar who obtained the highest score on the Imperial examination.
Different versions of the narrative have been passed down through the centuries. In several accounts, Lady White Snake's maid-servant was originally a male green snake. After losing a magical duel with Lady White Snake, he transformed into a female and became a maid so they could be together forever.
The story's 1992 television adaptation was a huge sensation in China; in fact, many Chinese girls would dress up as the white lady snake—a figure as iconic to them as a Disney princess would be to their Western counterparts.
The Leifeng pagoda, which was said to have trapped the white lady snake, is still visible today in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, next to West Lake. It began construction in 975 AD but collapsed in 1924 and was restored in 2002. Since then, it has been a famous tourist destination. Even modern-day young lovers flock to West Lake, the very place where the white snake lady met her lover.
Picture 1: White Snake TV adaptation
Picture 2: The Lady White Snake, her maid and her husband
Picture 3: The Leifeng Pagoda in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
The Chinese language is rich with idioms that contain snakes and have pleasant connotations.
蛇雀之报 (The favour of the snake and siskin)
According to legend, the Duke of Sui once saw a large serpent heavily wounded. He administered medicine to the snake, saving its life. After a year, the serpent returned with a pearl as a token of her gratitude.
When a guy named Yang Bao was little, he saw a yellow bird being chased by an owl. Yang Bao took the bird home to tend to its wound, and after it was well, it soared away. A young man dressed in yellow came back the following day bearing four rings of white jade as recompense.
This idiom means repaying a favour.
龙蛇飞舞 (flying like the dragon and the snake)
The graceful and exquisite strokes of classic Chinese calligraphy are like the slithers of serpents and dragons, as this idiom puts it.
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