CHINESE ART.

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Bai she zhuan ("The Legend of the White Snake"). A beautiful album of hand-coloured paintings narrating the Legend of the White Snake, an enduring Chinese folk tale recently adapted into a hit Netflix series. The 16 bright and dramatic scenes, produced by artisans at the distinguished Yangliuqing workshop, showcase traditional Chinese styles of rendering figures and perspective. WorldCat notes just three copies of this wonderful production.The legend tells the story of a white snake spirit dwelling in Hangzhou's West Lake. Curious to experience life as a human, the spirit transforms itself into a beautiful girl, Bai Suzhen, who falls in love with the young scholar Xu Xian. Meanwhile, Fahai, an evil monk, plots to break them apart because he opposes any union between spirits and humans. Fahai tricks Xu into leaving the now pregnant Bai, and she is defeated in a battle with Fahai's heavenly forces while trying to rescue her husband. Having given birth to a son, Bai is then imprisoned by Fahai under a pagoda, and there she remains until her son manages to rescue her several decades later. "The story's profound uncanniness lies in the humanity of the nonhuman [spirit] who metamorphasizes from a human-devouring demoness to a human-saving goddess" (Liang, p. 3).Originating in the Hangzhou region, the legend quickly spread across China, being retold as a novel, a ballad, and on the stage over many centuries. In the 20th century, the story appealed to intellectuals as a tale of femal

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