Moo's Review of Tsui Hark's Green Snake: Why Would Anybody Want To Be a Buddha If You Could Be a Magical Snake?

Green Snake! It's the year of the snake. So we're gonna talk about snakes! Actually I'm kidding, I watch this movie every summer. And I don't really love snakes. Or this year. Or the summer either. But I do love this movie. This is one of my favorite movies. So I'm gonna tell you about this movie!

I'll try not to put too many spoilers. Because maybe you'd watch it one day. But there will still be a fair bit of them. It ranks a 5 out of 10 in terms of amount of spoilers.

If you're up for a long reading of me talking about a ridiculous movie, then have a cup of tea, sit back and relax, I hope it'll be fun!

Oh and, more annoying disclaimer:

I can't really analyze this movie without explaining a little bit of Chinese history, which I don't understand too deeply. Not as deeply as a Chinese person who kept up with their classics all the way through high-school. But I want to attempt something anyway. You'll just have to keep in mind that I am a fifth grader (figuratively), so a whole bunch of the nuanced stuff will be lost. Chinese stuff in general is level 100 nuanced. And I can only be level 10 nuanced. But still, I will try my best! And I figured there's people out there just analyzing everything without any Chinese education whatsoever, with like, level 0 nuance. Also, I have a little bit of East-Asian religion knowledge from university days, which is also like at a level 10 nuance. But everyone should be able to analyze stuff and, this is my website. So here it is!

White Snake and Green Snake on the roof!

Plot Summary

Green Snake, Qing She (Ching Sh-uh), is a novel written by Lillian Lee in the 1990s. About two two snake spirits who just want to have fun but are told to not have fun, by the monks in Buddhist society. It's an interpretation of an ancient myth called White Snake, from the perspective of a woman who grew up in Hong Kong during the 70s and 80s. And Green Snake the movie, is an interpretation of that novel, directed by Cantonese director Tsui Hark, known for his 80s and 90s action movies at the time. The original White Snake is a folktale as old as time, going alllll the way back to the 600s. 600s, you guys! Who knows what's true to the story and what's made up. All the snakes want, is to be human and have a family, but they're not able to have said family because they're snakes. Who said so? The monks said so. Or, the Buddha said so. According to the monks, anyway. The monks are the closest thing you get to Buddha so everyone had better do what they say. The monks made this really, really clear. They underlined it, by going around, collecting animals and putting them in jars. Or bowls. This movie might be set in Ming dynasty, which is around 1500s, when Buddhism was really important. Or maybe it was Tang dynasty, when Buddhism was more important. We are not sure. We just know that in this universe, anything that violates the Buddha is bad news. Sexy women are bad news. Snakes are bad news. Sexy women who are also snakes are really really bad news! One of the monks, named “Fa Hai”*, is in particular against them. Some might even say that he's obsessed. He goes out of his way to cock-block them by making their boyfriend become a monk. How dare he. The snake ladies are not gonna let this go down with out a fight!

But, they're snakes!

The Snakes

In Chinese mythology, being an animal truly sucks. And this is because they can't go to Buddhist heaven. The two main animals are represented by women, it's a subtle way of saying women are under class. To be fair, a human's life isn't that great either. But if you're a human, you can at least escape by becoming a monk (or a nun but this movie doesn't have any nuns). You'd be all set, you're basically a Buddha. You just have to not have sex, and not have a whole bunch of other stuff, like hair, either. If you're an animal, you can still have sex but your life is kinda bad. Specifically, because you're hunted. Kind of like how the AI in Blade Runner are hunted. All the animals want is do is escape their crappy lives. But they're hunted for trying! It's a real catch-22!

The animals work very hard, despite it being illegal. They set themselves up in a mountain and do meditation and read Buddhist scriptures. In White Snake's case, she did that for 1000 years. 1000 years, you guys! She now has the body of a beautiful human woman (Joey Wong, specifically, one of the most popular actresses of 90s Hong Kong cinema), and can act like a human, talk like a human, feel things like a human. Except she can also turn into a snake at a drop of a hat, and has superpowers like making it rain and making houses with pretty gardens, and healing people with medicine. It sort of makes you question: why would anybody want to be a Buddha if you could be a magical snake?

Green Snake

You'd think that if Green Snake only trained for 500 years, she'd have the body of an ugly woman, but that's not the case at all. She's Maggie Cheung at the height of her beauty. What does White Snake have that she doesn't? Errr, some of the more nuanced human emotions, a little bit better powers maybe, and the ability to cry and love. But who cares about those things, right? It's so much more fun being Green Snake! Well, the movie is called Green Snake, so we are made to be a bit biased. She's a fish out of water. Or snake out of water. She's just starting to learn human customs and how to hide her tail, but she has the tendency to revert back to being a snake. Her powers aren't bad at all. She likes flying, catching rats, dancing with strangers and disappearing into a smoke cloud. And most of all, flirting with hot monks. She hasn't yet learned about boundaries so she does whatever she likes. I think it's every girl's secret wish to be Green Snake. Or maybe just my secret wish. No, I think it's everyone's. Absolutely everyone, boy or girl or other.

Despite the snake girls' awesomely fun lives, they are being denied the right to exist, specifically, by a monk called Fa Hai. Darn it!

Men and their Ambition

Before I start talking about Fa Hai, the stick-in-the-mud. I have to talk about Xu Xian, the other stick-in-the-mud. Xu Xian (pronounced like “See-yu See-an”), is the love interest of White Snake. He is played by Taiwanese actor Wu Xing-Kuo, who did a fantastic job. But it was so weird to see him as a guy! Side note: Because I grew up watching an entirely whole-some PG rated TV drama version of White Snake where he was played by a woman, I felt very surprised to see Xu Xian as a man, a man with sexuality, no less! It was so jarring, it took me years to get used to it. I've only recently begun to think Xu Xian is cute. I find him kind of annoying, still. He teaches Chinese classics to a classroom full of young men. Because only men can study. His devotion to getting good grades rivals the monk's devotion to the Buddha. This is understandable, because academics are a man's weapon at that time. The higher the grades you obtain, the more likely you'll be appointed a position in government and make lots of money. And also it just looks good. Everybody approved of a literary man. This is not unlike contemporary Chinese society at all. Xu Xian tells his students they shouldn't even think about girls, 'cause that's bad, they'll never get into a university. Or whatever the Ming equivalent of a university is. Bai, White Snake, watches this from afar and ends up having a crush on him. For whatever reasons only known to her. She calls Xu Xian, a “laoshi ren”, which the subtitles translate to “Mr Honest”. But I think the more accurate translation, is “Guy Likely To Not Cause Any Trouble Because Too Boring”, or “Total Stick-In-The-Mud”. But I guess that's not very romantic. Bai gets him on a boat. Gives him an umbrella. This is her way of flirting. When I saw this movie in high-school, I wondered to myself: how could I get a guy on a boat and give him an umbrella so he'd fall in love with me? Because Xu Xian falls rather easily in love and abandons all his scholarly ambitions.

Fa Hai, also known as "Fat-hoi" in Cantonese, is a rule-abiding, nuance-ignoring monk. I think "Fat-Hoi" sounds stupid, so I'll be using the Mandarin spelling (nothing wrong with Cantonese! I just find the English spelling distracting, it's English's fault!)

He is the strict Buddhist monk version of Xu Xian, the more interesting character, in my opinion. Traditionally, Fa Hai is an old guy with a pot belly and a long white beard and long white eye brows. Totally absurd choice for Maggie Cheung to be flirting with. But in this movie, he is played by 26 year old martial artist Vincent Zhao, who makes all the girls want to to be Green Snake so they can tease him and get him to be a bad Buddhist.

In a slightly unrelated note, when I was in university, one of my East-Asian religion professors said that, in this time when there weren't advanced technology yet, Buddhism was technology. It was believed that if you prayed in the right way to Buddha or you did the right Buddha things, they granted your wishes. Like making it rain so your crops could grow, or making it not rain so your houses don't fall down. And the monks are not only connected to Buddha, they are also a police force in that they hunt animals, who are believed to be responsible for both making your crops not grow and your houses fall down. If Buddhism is tech, I think that makes the monks the tech bros of ancient China. Fa Hai is a devoted, high-ranking tech bro. He goes around saying "Shan zai, shan zai" ("There's peace, there's peace."), hunting spiders, putting them in bowls. And he totally doesn't think about sex at all.

Except he totally does! He's repressed beyond belief! On one of his finding-animals-and-putting-them-in-bowl trips, he witnesses a naked woman giving birth to a baby in the forest, and can't get the image out of his mind. OMG. Shame on you Fa Hai. What are you gonna tell Buddha? Fa Hai is tormented, because on top of his new found perversion, he's also questioning his beliefs. The snakes were preventing the woman from being rained on. And in Fa Hai's brain, snakes are bad. If snakes are bad, then why good? And why is that new mom sexy? And why am I picturing naked bald women running around with snake tails? This weirdness is best observed by watching the movie. This is too much cognitive dissonance for our boy. And the Buddha statues are not happy at all.

Romance

At some point, Xu Xian gets caught between both ladies

When I was younger, I used to be obsessed with Green Snake and the monk. I didn't much care for Xu Xian and White Snake. I thought Green Snake and the monk were the “it” couple. Well, I wanted this to be true, for personal reasons. Clearly, he ignored her so they're meant to be. He secretly loves her! Because that's what every handsome stoic guy does in a movie. And of course she wants to be with him because why would any girl not want to be with Vincent Zhao's Fa Hai? Screw it with Buddhism, this is a romance novel, damn it! But now, I'm not sure. Is it a romance? Or rather, is it a straight romance? I'm watching with less of an egocentric perspective, hopefully. There's a lot of same-sex behaviour between Green Snake and White Snake that went over my head. Stuff like them snuggling, that I assumed to be “oh they're snakes and that's what snakes do”, or “this is because Tsui Hark is a perv and he just wants to see lesbians on screen”. Which may be true, but it's also likely true to Lillian's text. Like, in every sex scene with White Snake, Green Snake is watching and imitating. And what's the motivation behind Green Snake working hard to become a human? It's not clear cut. Except she knows that White Snake wants to be a human. Her tryst with Fa Hai is more about winning than about love. I don't want to spoil the plot too much. The text is more about Green Snake's relationship with White Snake, despite the men's heavy presence.

Other Themes

And it embodies so much more! Like the struggle between one's nature and ambition. Does every guy have to constantly be striving to either be a scholar or a Buddha? AKA Ming dynasty tech bro? OMG. And WHY is the Buddha SUCH an imposing figure? Why are the stone statues built to be so gigantic? It's so eerie to see a bunch of guys all shave their heads and all wear the same outfit and, all be hitting a wooden fish with a stick. Those are just a few of the themes in that movie. It's such a rich movie! It made me think again and again, what does Buddhism represent? Who is the modern day equivalent to Buddhism?

And it's really fun! There's minimal CGI and a lot of old school Wu Xia movie tricks. I'm not that familiar with Wu Xia. But it's got, you know, people flying around with invisible strings and, people dressed in a bunch of fabric blowing in the wind, and sword sounds. There's also real bridges and real water and real people walking around and falling over and stuff. And a lot of water! And giant prosthetic snakes! Green Snake, I recommend it 10/10. It's really easy to find on the internet. Just make sure you look for the 1993 version by Tsui Hark.

Thank you for reading this all the way : ) I really really appreciate it! This update took forever. But I think it's important to write stuff that I care about, and not just put out things for the sake of putting things out. I'll be updating again sometime in the future!

Note: Edited on August 9th, 2025