The wild, wild East: the first-ever Guangzhou Triennial and the fourth Shanghai Biennale, in their concurrent runs, caught the energy of the entrepreneurial New China and its art - Report From China

Some of the international entries, while no doubt still fresh for the Shanghai public, were overfamiliar to a New York eye: crowd scene photographs by Andreas Gursky, sparkly panda paintings and a video on the creatures' vanishing habitat by Rob Pruitt, the seven tent "Trasportable City" by Los Carpinteros, Haluk Akakce's Measure of All Things video, a room installation by Pipilotti Rist, and Tadashi Kawamata's bamboo scaffolding on the museum's exterior. Less widely shown, Jude Tallichet's human-body-size models of famous buildings in sandblasted Plexiglas perfectly matched the Biennale's focus.

Several foreign selections were notable for their formal wit. Japan's Kosuke Tsumura offered voluminous rainwear that could be adapted to cover both a person and surrounding objects, as well as skateboards covered in unlikely materials--fur, AstroTurf, tatami matting, etc. Navin Rawanchaikul, from Thailand, did a taxi-themed installation incorporating suspended cab roofs, traffic signs, and black wicker furniture with throw pillows patterned after carhop signals. The Japanese group Atelier Bow-Wow put together an open-slat "Furnicycle" series that includes one bicycle fitted with a rolling chaise longue and another with a tea-service ensemble. The drollery of a clear tunnel structure both shaped like a plastic bottle and made mostly of plastic bottles, by Japan's Shigeru Ban, was spoiled only by the work's tendency to collapse from time to time.

Per sheer simplicity and effectiveness of means it would be hard to beat Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich's Ballet Studio, a room with stretching bars and mirrored walls that, at the comers, created multiple reflections of performers in traditional Chinese attire practicing dance passages or tai-chi movements. Also notable for its elegance was Kyoto, My Love! by Hong Kong's Alan Chan, composed of leaning rectilinear aluminum rods covered with collaged close-up photos of a dense stand of bamboo. Among the most stylized works seeking to be utterly modern were a multiple wave furniture model in high-density foam by the U.S. artist and architect Greg Lynn and a model for a private residence designed, in the spirit of Zaha Hadid, by Austria's Gunther Domenig.

Making Eastern motifs accesible to Western viewers, Zhang Jian-Jun, who divides his time between New York and his native Shanghai, installed Sumi-Ink Garden of Re-Creation a gallery-filling environment. Its five 6 to 9 foot high blocks of sumi ink (some mixed with resin and fiberglass) were cast from scholars' rocks and constantly modified by the wear of trickling water. Set on old bricks from a demolished house, the contemplative objects stood surrounded by an open-frame wooden fence suggesting various views, and matched by five Black Dragon fish in a tank on the floor. In a similar vein, China's Yang Qirui placed on the museum lawn a towering sculpture in the titular form of a Shanghai Button, with four holes awaiting gigantic thread. Miao Xiaochun presented his life-size statue of an ancient Chinese scholar alongside lightbox photos showing the calm, contemplative character in today's hectic urban settings. Liu Qinghe, meanwhile, employs traditional ink-wash techniques to explore contemporary subjects--e.g., a couple in lawn chairs or a girl in a red bikini watching distant hills burn.