Xu Shilin (character)
character of the Legend of the White Snake
Xu Shilin (Chinese: 許士林), known as Xu Mengjiao (许梦蛟) in some versions, is a Chinese mythological figure, son of the white snake spirit Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian. He is a major character in the Legend of the White Snake, one of four great Chinese folk tales. The story has been adapted many times, including into Chinese operas, films, television series and other media.
The story of Xu Shilin Rescued His Mother is separate from the main legend of the White Snake and has become a well-known folktale in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. His legend is so popular throughout China that there's a common saying: "A child who fulfills the gratitude of their parents is like Xu Shilin, who demonstrated great filial piety to his mother".
Legends
Legend has it that he is an incarnation of the Wenquxing (Astral God of Civil Arts). Bai Suzhen was defeated and imprisoned in the imposing Leifeng Pagoda by Fahai. While imprisoned, Bai Suzhen gave birth to a son named Shilin. In an alternate version of the story, she named her son Mengjiao. This choice was inspired by a dream in which a dragon encircled her body just before she gave birth.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Xu Shilin (character)” as character of the Legend of the White Snake. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as character of the Legend of the White Snake. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17164654. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Xu Shilin (character)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.