Reimagining the legend of the White Snake in Singapore

Singapore author Amanda Lee Koe's latest millennium-spanning fantasy Sister Snake allowed her to explore her layered feelings towards home, family and country

- Clement Yong Correspondent

The seeds of Singapore author Amanda Lee Koe's latest millennium-spanning, queer-inflected fantasy Sister Snake were planted when she was just eight years old.

Sneaking a peek at the television long after her bedtime, her young eyes caught sight of actresses Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung in Hong Kong director Tsui Hark's film Green Snake (1993), respectively "beautiful" and "vivacious" - and "both so bad-a**".

The two of the "Four Flowers" of Hong Kong cinema played snake spirits who had taken on human form, fending off a persistent demon-hunter Buddhist monk while vying over the affections of love interest Xuxian (Wu Hsing-kuo).

After this, Lee Koe would imagine that she, too, was a "yaojing" (spirit), dressed up in her ballet leotard and her mother's silk kimono.

She would also mimic Singapore actress Fann Wong's curlicued bangs in the partially Mediacorp-produced television drama Madam White Snake (2001).

It is still her favourite Fann role, says Lee Koe, who lovingly incorporated Singapore pop culture in her breakout short story collection Ministry Of Moral Panic (2013).

"Yaojing characters were powerful and independent. I wanted to be free like them," Lee Koe recalls in an e-mail interview from New York where she is based.

There was, though, a niggling dissatisfaction. "What all the shows have in common is that the narrative pivots to focus on the love story between Bai Suzhen and Xuxian the moment he enters the picture. I didn't like how the snake spirits became litmus tests for the morality of the male characters."

So, at 37 years old, Lee Koe has written her own take on the Tang Dynasty legend, centring the uncategorisable love between the two snake sisters Bai and Xiaoqing.