As a pivotal figure connecting post-war Sinophone cinema across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, director Li Hsing reached both an aesthetic peak and provided a crucial case for coalescing a "native-land community" amid Cold War geopolitical shifts through his 1971 masterpiece, Execution in Autumn. Framed by diaspora theory, this study conducts a microscopic textual analysis of Li Hsing’s personal diaries and correspondence preserved at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). By contextualizing these archives within the creative practices and life trajectories of south-bound filmmakers and intellectuals—such as King Hu, Tien Feng, Liu Fang-kuang, and Pan Liu-tai—this paper explores how Li Hsing transformed his personal diasporic experience into a transregional force of cultural mobilization, utilizing culinary sociability as a medium, technical rigor as a means, and cinematic narrative as a vehicle. The study reveals that during the international political turbulence of 1971, particularly Taiwan's withdrawal from the United Nations, Li Hsing reshaped a "native-land community" grounded in diasporic consciousness within a transregional network of filmmakers. He achieved this through the spatial affirmation of Jiangnan-Zhejiang cuisine, meticulous insistence on cinematic technology, and the visual reconstruction of Confucian ethics. Furthermore, King Hu's martial arts aesthetics capturing the aura of the ancestral homeland, Tien Feng's self-empowerment through his career transition from actor to director, Liu Fang-kuang's metaphorical portrayal of sojourning in his directorial debut, and Pan Liu-tai's creative transformation after moving south all demonstrate a profound structural homological relationship with Li Hsing's cultural construction of the "native land."

Authors:
Wenlu Huang, Guangzhou University, China

About the Presenter(s)
Wenlu Huang, Lecturer at Guangzhou University. PhD from NCCU. Research: Taiwan cinema history, media history, & cultural studies. Current project: Reconstructing the micro-history of colonial media consumption via private diaries.

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