Tervort - The Legend of Green Snake and White Snake

http://adamtervort.com

http://kungpao.me

CC Adam Tervort 2011

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This novella is part of the ZodiacSchmodiac story cycle, a group of short stories based on theChinese Zodiac. Remember the paper placemats with zodiac animalsfrom your favorite Chinese buffet? The things it tells you arewildly inaccurate and probably have no resemblance whatsoever toyour life or situation, but reading them is fun and writing thesestories was too. (This story, of course, is the snake in the Zodiaccycle.)

Ever since I began living in Asia I haveloved traditional festivals and the stories that go along withthem. One of the most interesting is told at the Duanwu(Dragonboat) Festival. Ask 10 Chinese people for the story of TheLegend of White Snake and youll get 10 or more differentversions, all of them wonderful and strange in their own way.Although getting a definitive version isnt easy, the basic storyis easy to grasp. There are two demons, White Snake and Green Snake(who can both turn into human form), a man named Xu Xian who isbeguiled by them, and a monk named Fahai who tries to save Xu Xianfrom the demons. There is usually a tower involved. Green Snaketries to save White Snake from Fahai. Fahai may or may not besuccessful in saving Xu Xian from the demons. Xu Xian may or maynot want to be saved. It is either a love story or a tragedy, itdepends on the version you get. (See Wikipedia for more and a listof the variations.)

When I began writing this story I wanted itto take a different tackwacky from the start. I didnt intend towrite a novella, this was only supposed to be a short story, butonce I got into I couldnt stop. If you have ever read the originalstory you may be disappointed by some of the things you see here.When my wife heard that there were jackalopes she didnt think itwas very funny or very Chinesey. (But there are and it is funny, atleast to me.) When my mom read it she rolled her eyes at all of thewine that Fahai consumes. Could I make the poor monk into anyshallower of a person? After all, Jet Li is playing Fahais part inthe new movie being made in China. Couldnt he have been a bit morenoble? I guess not, because this Fahai jumped of the page in thisform from the very start. My wife also thought that all of thefaht jokes werent very funny, and they didnt even make sense inChinese. (Jokes about Fahais name. Shes right, they dont makeany sense in Chinese.) Luckily for me this book is in English, andI hope youll get the spirit of the fahtiness as it was intended:wackiness. There are few deep moral lessons in here, just lots ofvaguely Chinese jokes, but I hope youll enjoy it.

The poetry is, with one exception, mytranslation of the original Chinese. (Miss Greens froggie poem isall mine, and I am quite proud of it.) Two famous Tang Poems appearin the story. The first is (Tranquil Night) by the poet Li Bai , and the second is (SpringMorning) by Meng Hao-ran . If you enjoyed them you can check out some ofthe excellent translations available on the Internet, most muchbetter than those by yours truly.

The Zodiac Schmodiac Story Cycle,1stCourse: Kung Pao Flavored ShortStories will hit the shelves of fine bookstores ( Smashwords , Amazon , etc.) at the end ofAugust 2011. If you enjoy this story you might consider purchasingthe full book. I appreciate your support and look forward tohearing from you with your comments and reactions. (You can find mycontact info at the end of the book, or email me anytime, adam @adamtervort.com)

As far as demons go, Miss White and MissGreen were pretty good. They tried their best to do good deeds,help out the other demons when they were feeling down, and consumeas few humans as possible. It was hard work, being a nice demon,but they both really tried.

Miss White had aspirations of making themove from being merely demonic to being divine. It was a big jump,no one since that mean looking dude with the red face and reallybig sword had done it successfully, but she really wanted to be thesecond. Miss Green wasn't nearly so ambitious. If she could go adecade or two without flooding towns, causing famines and incitingwars she felt pretty darn good about herself. When you know yourdeath toll for the past ten years is only in triple digits it makesit much easier to look in the mirror in the morning.

Of course they weren't always good. Beingdemons makes that a given. Miss White had a really bad habit ofwanting to sneak away into the human world and bewitch hot guys,especially guys who studied hard. She'd take on a human form, flashsome leg, quote some Confucius, and then offer to show them back toher place for wine and poetry reading. It worked every time. She'dlead them back down into the Banbuduo where demons live and keepthem there for months at a time. Since the Banbuduo is a differentlevel of reality than the human world she'd have to wipe thememories of the poor guys before she could send them back, but thatmade the game more exciting for her. Her favorite was picking upthe same guy over and over again. He'd never remember her, but shesure remembered him. One poor sap kept getting picked up over andover, and ended up living for 500 years. He became pretty famousback in the human world, but that didn't bother Miss White. Pickingup famous guys is a real adventure.

The biggest challenge for demons like MissWhite and Miss Green, the kind who like to slip into the humanworld and make trouble, were the sorcerers. Man, those guys reallybugged Miss Green. It seemed that whenever she was really tryinghard to be good, trying to help people and prevent naturaldisasters, really picking up good karma points, some ugly oldsorcerer with a scraggly beard filled with lice would show up andchase her off. Sometimes they'd just run her off, but sometimesthey'd try to trap her in the human world. She once spent threehundred years stuck in the bottom of a well when a sorcerer caughther off guard, turned her into a turtle and tossed her in the well.She knew she was in trouble when he started to build a temple overthe top of the well, and for three hundred years the monks in thetemple were trained to keep her captive with incantations andofferings to the gods. She finally got out when a construction crewaccidentally uncapped the well and she crawled out. One of theworkers caught her and took her home to cook for dinner, but sherose up out of the pot just before he was ready to eat her and atehim. She wasn't very proud of that last bit, but she really neededto get three hundred years of anger out somehow, and anyways he wasgoing to eat her! What else could a demon be expected to do?