Legend of the White Snake: West Lake to Jinshan

In the standard opera telling, the story begins far to the west. A white snake and a blue-green snake from Mount Emei transform themselves into two young women, Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing, and become best friends. Then they travel to Hangzhou. The legend doesn't pin their cave to a single spot, so the marker simply sits on the mountain, where the journey east begins.

Location precision: The tale names the mountain but not a cave or temple; the pin marks Mount Emei itself.

On a rainy day the two women board a ferry on West Lake and meet a young man called Xu Xian, who lends them his umbrella. Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian fall in love at once, marry, and open a medicine shop. The lake is a real one, about 5.6 square kilometres of water, and in folklore it is the stage for several famous tales, this one above all. Walk its shore and you are walking through the legend's first act.

Location precision: The tale places the meeting on a ferry somewhere on the lake; the pin marks the lake's centre.

Visitor guidance: Walk the lakeshore and the causeways that cross it.

Fahai, abbot of Jinshan Temple in Zhenjiang, tells Xu Xian that his wife is a snake. After Xu Xian goes to the temple, Fahai keeps him inside, and Bai Suzhen answers by flooding the temple, though her power is limited because she is pregnant. The real temple is much older than the tale: first founded between 323 and 325, it lost more than 200 buildings to a fire in 1948. Its seven-storey Cishou Pagoda, 36 metres tall, was rebuilt in 1900.

Visitor guidance: A working temple, so visit quietly.

Xu Xian escapes the temple and finds his battered wife on Broken Bridge, which this telling names as the place they first met. Xiaoqing is so furious that she wants to kill him, but Bai Suzhen stops her, and both forgive him. The name puzzles visitors: the bridge is not broken. The present three-span stone arch was built in 1922, though a bridge has stood here since the Tang dynasty, and it is a popular stop because of this very scene.

Visitor guidance: Open to walkers and busy, thanks to this very legend.

After their son is born, Fahai tracks the couple down, defeats Bai Suzhen and imprisons her under Leifeng Pagoda. In some versions the son later becomes top scholar and pays respects at the pagoda, moving the heavens to free his mother. The real pagoda, on Sunset Hill, was built in 975, and collapsed on 25 September 1924 after people took its bricks to grind into powder. The new tower opened on 25 October 2002 over the old base.

Visitor guidance: The original base and the finds from its underground chamber are preserved at the tower.