20th Anniversary Contribution Phantom feminism and the endless life of sex Katrien Jacobs Chinese University of Hong Kong Keywords Chinese history, fictions and movies, ghost, Hong Kong, phantom As part of my research on sexually explicit art and media in mainland China and Hong Kong, I unfolded the theme of queer sexuality in historical ghost fictions and movies (Jacobs, 2015). Several years before doing this research, I also wrote a script for a short film and video installation, The Ghost of Sister Ping, which I eventually produced and exhibited in Fall 2017 in collaboration with a team of artists and the artspace Videotage. The story is set in contemporary Hong Kong and presents a young academic lecturer, Sister Ping, who is intellectually accomplished but socially awkward and sexually frustrated. These circumstances change when she develops a crush on an older male scholar who spends a semester at her university. The ghost narratives from the Ching and Ming Dynasties (1368–1864) and Hong Kong movies from the 1970s and 1980s also narrate stories concerning a middle- aged scholar or functionary, usually a male and well-established person, who is derailed from an arduous task through the power of a sexualized ghost. In some of these movies, like Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1988) the viewer also becomes sympa- thetic to the ghost who wavers between earthly relations and her own tempestuous non-human realm. I borrowed this motif when featuring Sister Ping, a lecturer who has a deep crush but who is unable to realize sexual satisfaction and therefore walks towards her death amongst the stark mountainous landscapes of the Hong Kong New Territories. It had taken me several years to develop this ghost story and to apply for film funding from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. When I finally managed to get a film grant, the theme of the death wish caught up with my own deep personal distress, which included consecutive bouts of illness and the successive deaths of my sister and mother, This long process of anxiety and Sexualities 0(0) 1–5 ! The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1363460718790855 journals.sagepub.com/home/sex Corresponding author: Katrien Jacobs, Chinese University of Hong Kong 307 Leung Kau Kui Shatin shatin, Hong Kong. Email: kjacobs@cuhk.edu.hk