Bai she zhuan ("The Legend of the White Snake").

Tianjin: Tianjin Yangliuqing huadian,, [c.1995]. An exquisite hand-coloured album chronicling a famous Chinese legend 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 female empowerment, and it was enjoyed by moviegoers and fans of Peking opera throughout the Republican period and into the 1950s. Following the Maoist Cultural Revolution, the Peking opera version was quickly revived alongside new adaptations for television, including a version presented to Western audiences on Netflix in 2019. The present album exemplifies the artisanship for which the publisher, Tianjin's Yangliuqing workshop, remains famous. The Yangliuqing region has been a well-known producer of prints since the 18th century, and the elite workshop was founded in 1958 as an amalgamation of various printmakers. Each Yangliuqing production is a piece of book art, down to the different design combinations of silk brocade used to make the covers and case for each copy of the present album. Oblong folio, concertina-style (310 x 432 mm). With 16 woodblock printed and hand-coloured scenes. Original decorative silk brocade boards, front board with gold-speckled green label lettered in black with red publisher's seal. Housed in original silk brocade interlocking folding case with bone ties, title label and decorative silk lining. Brocade bright, upper board slightly bowed, trace of skinning on title label, couple of edges neatly re-glued. A near-fine copy in the attractive case with bump at one corner, slight soiling on title label, couple of spots of wear on internal lining, tie damaged with another missing. Liang Luo, The Global White Snake, 2021.