英文摘要
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Xin Baishezhuan (White Snake: A New Story) is the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly writer Bao Tianxiao's (1876-1973) last novel. It was initially penned in 1948, while Bao was staying in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and finally published as book edition in 1958. In this novel, Bao appropriates the major characters and plot of the traditional white snake story and shifts its background to 1947, after China's victory of anti-Japanese war. The theme of the story is the struggles of female, along with descriptions of traditional customs and social phenomenon in Shanghai and Suzhou, especially the reactionary forces and chaos caused by insatiable human desires. The style of Xin Baishezhuan is similar to the "social novel" genre that Mandarin Duck and Butterfly writers are good at, and its inheritance of late Qing "novels of exposure" is also obvious. Finding herself in a chaotic time, the protagonist Bai Suzhen skillfully fights against rascals and spies, rescues her husband Xu Xuan and idealist youths again and again. Eventually, she reforms herself as a "new person" who can adapt to the life in "New China." As a result, this novel ingeniously echoes to the archetype of white snake story and partially reveals Bao's sympathy for leftist in his old age.
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