Hangzhou and Verona: twin cities

 

Hangzhou and Verona, cities far thousands of kilometres, but as close as never before.

From one year to now these two cities are twin cities, to enforce the relationship between the two countries and the two communities. What do they have in common? The Italian city of Verona and the Chinese city of Hangzhou are connected by the most powerful feeling of all: love.

Verona is where the famous drama of Romeo and Juliet take place, Hangzhou is the city in which there is the well-known legend of the white snake, told in the Leifeng tower.

This year, in the month of September, in Hangzhou, took place the "Love Week", to celebrate the friendship between the two cities. During this special week it was also possible to get married on a boat, while sailing in the Yangtze river, wearing traditional clothes of the two cutures.

Here there are the two stories, I used different surces to resume them, enjoy!

The story of White Snake

The legend of the White Snake is one of the China’s four Great Folktales, and it has countless versions in folklore, literature, and drama.

Everything starts at West Lake where, on the Broken Bridge, one of the eight Immortals pretends to be an old man selling tangyuan in a particular way: the small ones are expensive, and the big ones are cheaper. In that way a lot of people go and buy the big tangyuan.

After a while, a young guy called Xuxian, touched by the view of this man and the way people were taking advantage of him, decided to buy some of the small tangyuan, without knowing the hidden power inside them, they were immortality pills!

The next three days Xuxian is not hungry, so, suspicious, he decides to go back to the seller and ask him the reason why he was feeling in that way. At the view of the young boy, the old men laugh, and he bring the guy to the Broken Bridge, then he flips him upside down and causes him to vomit the tangyuan in the water.

Inside the lake there were a white snake spirit and a tortoise spirit that have been training for years in the hope of becoming part of the group of the immortals. The spirit of the white snake eats the immortal pills that fell in the water, but the tortoise spirit cannot make it and becomes incredibly jealous of the white snake that, thanks to he pills, gained 500 years of super powers.

The spirit of the white snake would like to say thanks to Xuxian, so she transforms herself into a beautiful young lady called Bai Suzhen. On her way to the guy, she saves a green snake called Xiaoqing, that decides to thank her transforming herself into a young lady to be the sister of Bai Suzhen.

On a rainy-day Bai Suzhen finally meets Xuxian on the Broken Bridge. The young guy gently lends her and her sister his umbrella, to protect them from the rain and the two, Bai Suzhen and Xuxian fall immediately in love. Their love grows and the get married.

Time passes and the tortoise earns enough powers to take human form as buddhist monk named Fahai. In his new aspect, Fahai approaches Xuxian and tell him that during the Dragon Boat Festival his wife should drink a special wine infused with herbs that will expel all the demons. Xuxian listens to him and gives his wife this special wine. Bai Suzhen, not knowing what the wine would do, drinks it. Drinking the wine, she gets back to her original form, a white snake, causing her husband to die for the shock.

Desperate because of the death of Xuxian, the two young ladies travel far away, looking for magical herbs. Once they found the herbs they were looking for, they gave them to the loved husband of Bai Suzhen, who comes back to life. The young guy still loves her, despite her true nature.

Fahai imprisons Xuxian in the Jinshan temple. Bai Suzhen wants to free him using her powers, but her powers are limited because she is pregnant, so she destroys the temple, but she is not able to free her husband.

Even if Xuxian does not have powers he isdefinitely brave and strong, reason why he manages to escape from Fahai and reach his wife in Hangzhou, where they can stay together and take care of their son.

Everything looks fine, but Fahai tracks them down and imprisons Bai Suzhen in the Leifeng Pagoda.

20 years later…

Xu Mengjiao, the son of the white snake spirit and Xuxian, gets a high score at the imperial examination, so he goes back home in glory.

In the meanwhile, Xiaoqing gets enough power to defeat Fahai in the Jinshan Temple. Defeating him, the Leifeng Pagoda collapses and let Bai Suzhen free, allowing her to stay happily with her family.

 

Romeo and Juliet

The story starts with two big families, Montague and Capulet that are at war and have had another fight.

The Prince of Verona, to maintain peace, warn them, saying that if they fight again the head of the two families will be killed.

Juliet’s father promised the hand of the young daughter to Count Paris, but he asked the future husband of his daughter to wait few years before the wedding, so he organises a mask ball where the two families can meet and know better each other.

During the mask ball, Juliet meets Romeo, a Montague, and the two immediately fall in love. They profess their love when Romeo climbs the wall into the orchard garden of Juliet’s family’s house and finds her alone at the window.

Thanks to the help of the nurse, the two get secretly married by Friar Laurence.

Tybalt Capulet, Juliet’s cousin, finds out the interest of Romeo regarding Juliet and kills Mercutio, one of Romeo’s dearest friends.  Because of a code of honour between men, Romeo kills Tybalt but, because of that he has been banished to another city by the Prince of Verona, far away from his loved Juliet.

Juliet’s father arranges her wedding with Count Paris, not knowing that she is secretly married to someone else. Juliet is desperate and she asks help to Friar Laurence, who gives her a potion that will make her appear to be dead and proposes that she takes it and Romeo rescues her.

Juliet accept the idea and she writes a letter to Romeo to inform him about the plan but, unluckily, the letter never arrives to him.

Romeo goes back immediately when he hears about the death of Juliet and he reaches her at her family’s tomb. Romeo looks at her and he realizes that he cannot live without her, so, after giving her one last kiss, he kills himself with a poison.

After a while, the effect of Friar Laurence’s potion ends, and Juliet wakes up. The first thing Juliet sees is the dead body of Romeo, so she kills herself with the same poison he used before.

The families realise how bad and poisonous was the war between them and decide to put an end to it.