Classical fetishism and phantom flesh: Li Han-hsiang and the transregional grammar of Chinese erotica

This article examines how Li Han-hsiang’s 1970s fengyue (‘wind and moon’) films at Shaw Brothers fashioned a transregional grammar of Chinese-language erotica. Within an East and Southeast Asian media ecology shaped by expanding erotic-film circulation and incompatible regimes of censorship and exhibition, Li organized sexual visibility without relying primarily on anatomical exposure. I conceptualize this grammar through two related but distinct operations. Classical fetishism distributes erotic action across historically coded bodies, objects, and spaces; phantom flesh assembles an apparently continuous character body from a star’s face, a substitute’s exposed flesh, obstructed framings, and editing. Shaw Brothers’ network made this grammar mobile, while Li’s formal organization gave the films a recognizable erotic and cultural identity under uneven conditions of visibility. A comparison with Mou Tun-fei’s sustained corporeal continuity and direct bodily impact shows that Li’s approach was not an automatic effect of censorship or studio production. The article finally considers the grammar’s reuse and transformation in Category III erotic cinema and its formal resonance in Raise the Red Lantern. Li’s historical significance lies in making the shifting relations between flesh and object, exposure and obstruction, and star and substitute the primary site of erotic meaning.