Zheng Guogu In the coastal manufacturing city of Yangjiang, a two-bedroom apartment can be purchased for around $7,000. The artist Zheng Gougu’s aquarium-filled triplex, which he pieced together from seven such apartments on the top floors of an ordinary midrise, is, like much of his work, a response to contemporary life in China outside its major cities. Zheng attended art school in Guangzhou, and since his inclusion in ‘‘Cities on the Move’’ a decade ago, his career has taken him around the world. But this seemingly forgettable semitropical town of mopeds and open-air markets continues to inspire his work, from his early photographic tableaux ‘‘Yangjiang Youth,’’ in which his friends enacted gangster scenes not far removed from their own lives, to his best-known series of paintings ‘‘Computer Controlled by Pig’s Brain,’’ which appropriates textual and graphic elements from advertisements in the Hong Kong periodicals that circulate there. In recent years, Zheng has spearheaded the Yangjiang Group, a ragtag band of drinking buddies and amateur calligraphers with whom he produces elaborate installations of fake trees and crumpled rice-paper ponds. (photo Song Chao) (courtesy www.nytimes.com)