"The Snake Man" (Chinese: 蛇人; pinyin: Shérén) is a short story by Pu Songling first published in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio which revolves around the titular snake-keeper and his snakes.

The snake man prefers Green the Second, who is described as having a "red-spotted forehead" and an ability to "invariably wind and sway" per his commands.

[3] In his postscript, Pu comments that duplicitous persons should "feel themselves shamed by these two snakes".

[3] Originally titled "Sheren" (蛇人), "The Snake Man" is believed to be one of the earlier entries that Pu wrote for his anthology that was published in around 1740;[4] it was fully translated into English by the first volume of Sidney L. Sondergard's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio published in 2008.

[1] As Allan Barr opines in his Comparative Studies of Early and Late Tales in Liaozhai Zhiyi (1985), "The Snake Man" is a reflection "on the ironic discrepancy between the modesty of the snakes in the story and the spiteful pride of man".