What's up with the woman sitting in a van full of snakes?

"See the holy snakes. See the beauty" was the translation of the man who was calling people to go in the van. We see the woman sitting on a chair inside a transparent box with snakes crawling around at her feet. Was she some kind of religious figure or what? Later Xiao Yu sleeps in front of a screen showing Tsui Hark's "Green Snake" a version of the Madame White Snake myth and then she sees a CGI snake crossing a road. I wonder how all these are connected. The director says he wanted to connect the characters with characters of traditional Wuxia films and that's apparent with Xiao Yu later in her violent actions but does anyone have any ideas how are the snakes connected?