The current occupant of the White House can keep the Rose Garden. Somewhere on the other side of the globe, a Chinese billionaire built a replica of the White House with an even better view: of Mount Rushmore.

Not that he wanted to rub it in.

“He worked out of the Blue Room, instead of the Oval Office,” said Lauren Greenfield, who photographed him in 2002. “He didn’t want to disrespect the president.”

That encounter was the beginning of Ms. Greenfield’s exploration of extreme wealth in China, a body of work known as “The Bling Dynasty.” Through photographs and videos, she has tracked how the Chinese learn to acquire the goods of the good life, which often entails also having to learn how to use them. She has also shown how their relationship to wealth has changed from tacky to thoughtful, with an eye toward national growth and the greater good.

“What was happening in 2014 was like Wealth 2.0, in the sense rich people there are not interested anymore in just having flashy things,” she said. “Now they are interested in buying and showing class, a kind of nobility.”

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Ms. Greenfield’s work in China is an outgrowth of an earlier project, “Fast Forward,” which looked at youth culture and privilege in Los Angeles. Not long after, she had the chance to go to China at a time when newly minted moguls were snapping up name brands to broadcast their fortune. It would become part of a larger project, “Wealth: The Influence of Affluence,” which takes a global look at the superrich. The coming book and exhibit will include her take on the rich in Moscow, which had a similar trajectory to China, and Mexico, where fears of kidnapping among the rich made it difficult for her to gain access.

Her 2002 trip to China — where she also found another billionaire who built a replica of Versailles outside Beijing — led her to a distant rural village where some people became wealthy after privatization of factories. Suddenly, she said, people who had once been peasants were building five-story townhouses with marble and big windows.

“Often, there would be a whole floor that was not in use,” she said. “They didn’t need the space, but they wanted their house to be bigger than the person’s next door. Sometimes you would see plastic furniture inside because people didn’t know how to furnish.”

That kind of clueless ostentation, Ms. Greenfield said, was no longer commonplace. Part of it is because of crackdowns on corruption, making people less willing to show off their wealth. But it is also, she said, because of an evolving attitude toward money and what it can buy, and topping the list is class, which also means being more discreet.

Intent on showing education and cultivation, the wealthy have turned to people who can guide them in this unfamiliar turf. Among them is Sara Jane Ho, the owner of an etiquette school who was educated abroad. She offers a two-week class that teaches students how to live the life, from eating foods like oysters and foie gras to the proper pronunciation of Hermès or Louis Vuitton. On a recent trip, Ms. Greenfield photographed a showcase event featuring yachts, where the accompanying lifestyle of caviar, champagne and cigars was also on full display.

“They weren’t just selling yachts,” she said. “They were teaching the good life.”

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But that life is often intertwined with their business. While the yacht salesmen may try to sell them on taking time to relax in luxury, the wealthy Chinese she photographed were more apt to use a yacht’s biggest room not as a bedroom, but as a parlor in which to entertain clients. In some ways, she said, their motivation is more practical.

“Wealth does not have the same individualistic quality it has here,” Ms. Greenfield said. “It’s not the 1 percent indulging themselves in luxury. They are doing it in a practical way that means development for China. They appropriated our status symbols, but the reason behind it is quite different. Now, it’s important for the wealthy Chinese to go to the U.S. for school. They want to go to boarding school here, then get into the good colleges. And after they get their Harvard M.B.A., they are going back to China with their knowledge and expertise.”

“The Bling Dynasty” was an assignment for GQ Magazine.

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