Scratching the Chinese surface: The White Snake Lady

I just came back from the beautiful city of Hangzhou and everywhere I went, there was a talk about the white snake lady.. This is what I understood:

There was a snake that spent hundreds of years meditating, and slowly became more intelligent and gained other super powers (if you don't know what this means, read about immortality in China).

One day, the snake was moving around, and saw a handsome gentelman. The snake fell in love.

The snake then used its superpowers and morphed to a beautiful woman, and went to meet the man. The man fell in love with her, and they lived happily together.

The snake/woman quickly gained fame and respect in society. She was beautiful, warm-hearted and used her skills to cure people from diseases.

The monk, who was the teacher of the man, suspected that the woman was a monster. And the laws of heaven disapproved a marriage between animals and humans. So he prepared a magic drink to reverse the morphing (to get the woman to her original shape -> snake). The monk then captured the snake, and put it underneath a big building (pagoda).