White Snake

White Snake is a collection of novellas and short stories by Yan Geling, published in 2014 by Tianjin People's Publishing House. It contains five works—"White Snake," "Also Adam, Also Eve," "The Magic Dawn," "White Sparrow," and "A Story in the School"—all taking unconventional gender and emotional relationships as their entry point. The title novella "White Snake" is the representative work, having won the Seventh October Novella Literature Prize. "White Snake" draws on the old folk legend of The White Snake—that the Green Snake was originally male and, after being defeated by the White Snake, transformed into a female to stay by her side—to tell the story of dancer Sun Likun: she rose to fame with her self-choreographed dance drama The White Snake, renowned for her "snake steps" and "snake neck"; during the Cultural Revolution, she was interrogated over her contacts with foreign dance colleagues and confined in the scenery warehouse of the song-and-dance troupe, her former brilliance and dignity worn away bit by bit. A young man named Xu Qunshan, claiming to be a special envoy from the central authorities and wearing a military greatcoat, visits daily for long conversations. The novella interweaves three conflicting narratives—the "official version," the "folk version," and the "unknown version": official reports, street rumors, and a girl's diary each tell a different story, and the truth emerges only at the end in the private account. The other four pieces likewise center on displaced emotions and identities: "Also Adam, Also Eve" depicts loneliness and humanity in a transnational surrogacy transaction; "The Magic Dawn" looks back at the actors and audiences of old opera troupes; "White Sparrow" and "A Story in the School" portray desires and disillusionment crushed by circumstance. The collection displays Yan Geling's calm, restrained style and her ongoing inquiry into individual dignity, gender boundaries, and emotional freedom in a particular era.