A Chinese woman cut off her husband's penis as payback for an affair, and repeated the feat after the organ was sewn back on, Chinese media reported.

Investigators determined that the appendage of a 32-year-old man surnamed Fan had "completely disappeared" following December attacks in the central province of Henan, government-owned media outlet HNR said.

Fan's wife, who was not named in the report, took the radical step of chopping off his penis after she found out he was in a relationship with a 21-year-old woman.

Fan "rushed to a hospital" after the incident, and doctors re-attached his penis. But his wife crept into a ward as he slept to claim the organ again.

The two subsequently clashed outside the facility, with a naked and bleeding Fan repeatedly beating his wife, until onlookers called the police.

Pictures posted online said to be of Fan showed a nude man dragging a fully clothed person over a road.

Doctors and onlookers searched for Fan's penis but were unable to locate it, the report said. Fan's wife suffered from a mental illness and had been detained by police, it added.

Fan was transferred to another hospital where doctors operated on him for an hour, the report said.

He later recovered his health, but was in "an unstable mood, and very upset", it said.

The double attacks appeared to have strengthened the romance between Fan and his mistress, surnamed Zhang, with the two deciding to marry.

Zhang was quoted as saying: "It doesn't matter if he turns out to be infertile, he has five children anyway." (+++++)