It’s kind of funny that it took an institution all the way from Italy to bring these awesome local Chinese inventions into a gallery, in China. Nonetheless, it was still a great thing, when Color went to Shanghai last year to present an exhibition to explore why and how individuals are inventing new ways of getting from A to B.

Wang Qiang in his Flying Machine. Photo by Mauro Bedoni

These inventions have been featured in many of those “bizarre China” news articles, and were also featured in a Chinese show explaining the engineering of these machines. It’s nice to see the inventors -mostly rural villagers- and their stories and motivations incorporated into the presentation for a change. All of a sudden they became culturally relevant works of art being presented in a collective with accompanying photography and captions.