She Danced for Her Interrogator: "White Snake" by Yan Geling

Snakes are sexy—there’s just no denying it. The woman who played the White Snake on stage had a body like a ribbon of smoke: sinuous, hypnotic, impossible to look away from. Men watched her with the kind of hunger that had little to do with art.

But in the chaos of 1960s China, during the Cultural Revolution, artists weren’t just criticized—they were jailed. And while many were interrogated about ideology or subversion, only she was asked to explain, in vivid detail, how exactly she had “unfastened her waistband.” Yes, they made her account for her sensuality.

Even in detention, she couldn’t escape male curiosity. Despite gaining weight and wearing ragged clothes, guards still climbed the walls just to glimpse her. She’d shoo them off with a laugh and a curse: “What I’ve got, your mother has too.”She’d been dealing with that nonsense for years.

Then he arrived.

She noticed his hands first—too smooth, too delicate to be a man’s. His cough wasn’t masculine either. When he raised a loose fist to his lips, there was something tender, almost poetic, in the gesture.“For a fleeting moment, the frailty and softness of his being were revealed.”

He introduced himself as a special commissioner, a comrade official. He moved with grace, removing his white gloves one finger at a time. She was suspicious: his hands had no hard angles—just fluid lines. Something didn’t add up.

He looked her up and down—dishevelled, worn out—and said, “You really haven’t changed.”

She shot back,“So, what are you here to investigate?”

“Why have you never got married?” he replied.“Whether you’ve ever loved anyone.”

He asked her to dance. Said it was part of the “interrogation.”She danced. Day after day.She realised eventually: this wasn’t an interrogation. It was a rescue.

He was trying to make his presence feel routine, so that when the moment came, he could walk in and lead her out. No drama, no alarms.

And she? She fell for him—this young man in military wool. As she danced, her body transformed. She shed the bloat and bruises of prison life like a snake slipping out of its old skin. Her movements returned to their former grace.

She asked his age. He was over a decade younger. Did he have a girlfriend?No.

At the second-to-last “interrogation,” he reached out. She leaned in, heart thudding. But he just gave her hand the gentlest tug—and walked away.

At their final meeting, she nearly cried: “Take me away with you.”“I’m here to take you away,” he said.

They walked out of the detention centre together.

He took her for a long, slow drive—letting her feel the world again, after so long behind walls. At a hotel, she sank into a steaming bath. Freedom. Water. Heat.

He put on a cassette: the soundtrack from The Legend of the White Snake.

“You have enchanted me since I was eleven. Maybe twelve.”

Now she realised that he wasn't just watching her performance—he was performing, too.

When the hat came off, everything is clear. She reached for her hair, imagining sideburns on his face.“Each translucent fingernail brushed her skin, careful not to snag a silk thread from skin as fine as satin.”

His name wasn’t “Qunshan” as StoneHill, but "Qunshan" as SeaCorals.

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The novella White Snake by Yan Geling, first published in 1999, appears in the short story collection of the same name. The book is a cornerstone of queer Chinese literature. Among its five stories, White Snake, White Sparrow, and A Story at School centre on lesbian themes—offering bold, tender portraits of love that defy both time and repression.

The Book Cover of White Snake

The Author, Yan Geling, was once a dancer herself when she was young