Yan Geling took inspiration from the legend of the White Snake. According to this myth, two spirits half-snake, half-human arrived on Earth to live among us. Near the West Lake in China, the White Snake and her servant the Green Snake, took the form of a woman and her maid. A young man who passed by fell madly in love with the woman and married her. Unfortunately, their secret revealed, the two women return to their snake form to escape the wrath of the husband who felt utterly betrayed.

 In Yan Geling's rewriting of the legend, the dancer Sun Likun was praised at a very young age for her interpretation of the heroine of the ballet "The Legend of the White Snake". But twenty years later, around the late 1960s, she was arrested and kidnapped by the government during the Cultural Revolution. Now prisoner, she remembers the beautiful years during which she was adored. One day, a mysterious young man visits her; he introduces himself as an inspector who has come to interrogate her, but his manners confuse her, while her guards wonder if this man is really who he claims to be.

Built in three parts of different styles, the story alternates between the official report, the public rumors and the intimate story, giving rise to subtle variations on the feeling of love.