The Red Chain Snake belongs to the second class of national protected animals, and was listed in the List of Beneficial or Economically and Scientifically Important Terrestrial Wild Animals under State Protection by the State Forestry Administration on August 1, 2000, and was named the Red Chain Snake because of the red (reddish-brown) narrow horizontal stripes it possesses, and it is a kind of non-venomous snake.

The Red Chain Snake is a species of snake in the family Serpentes, which is distributed in China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Russia. The red chain snake distributed in China is a subspecies. The adult length of the subspecies is about 1 meter, and the back of its body is dark brown with a reddish-brown color. It is named for the narrow, transverse stripe of color, but some individuals lack the red stripe. The oral mucosa often enters the orbit. The dorsum of the head is black with a reddish scale margin, a reddish spot on the occiput, and a black stripe on the postorbital region reaching backward to the 7th supralabial scale. A specimen from Chong'an, Fujian, has a median row of 21, with smooth dorsal scales, or a few central rows of posterior body segments slightly ribbed. Male and female 188-224, male and female 184-222. also known as Red Forty-eight Section, Red Spotted Snake, Red Flowering Son, Dry Ground Fire Chain, Red Hundred-sectioned Snake, Blood Three-more, Chained Snake, Mulberry Root, Neem Root, and so on. The whole body emits a rotten fishy odor.

Members of the proto-chain-snake genus Dinodon and the white-ringed snake genus Lycodon are morphologically similar, and in the past, the main taxonomic indications between the genera were that their maxillary teeth were all divided into three anterior, middle and posterior groups by two gaps in their dentition, but the last group of chain-snakes was three in the genus Lycodon, while the white-ringed snakes were two in the genus Lycodon. A synthesis of molecular biology, phylogeny, and morphology led to the conclusion that the original genus Chain Snake should be a synonym of White Ring Snake. Considering that some members of the genus Chain Snake are better known than the members of the genus White Ring Snake, some scholars believe that the genus Chain Snake can be taken as the Chinese name of the genus White Ring Snake.