What fate awaits a thousand-year-old white snake that travels from its sacred mountain home to the human world, only to fall in love with a mortal? Such is the bizarre beginning of this tragic love story, one of the most popular in all of Chinese opera.

Lady White's marriage and loyal devotion to her beloved husband Xu Xian is considered by Fahai--the abbott of a nearby temple--as heresy and an abomination. Fahai attempts to make Xu Xian aware of the apparent danger he faces from his own wife. And in a spectacular battle, the devout monk musters all his powers to get rid of Lady White Snake once and for all. Although our heroine prevails in the end, time is not on her side and there is great loss.