WENZHOU, China — Here in this smoggy coastal metropolis, the nouveau-riche heart of entrepreneurial China, the latest sign that one has really made it is not a Benz, or even a Bentley. It is a helicopter. Perhaps 10 of Wenzhou’s super-rich have one.

Guan Hongsheng has three. Although, really, who’s counting?

“For us, a workweek is 80 hours or more. So you know what we need? Fast,” said Mr. Guan, a gold-necklaced, yacht-sailing titan who made a fortune as a trader. To relieve the stress of making vast sums of money, he said, there is nothing like zipping around in a copter.

“Only then can I truly relax,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

If only it were legal, too.

Mr. Guan and his friends are black fliers — part of a minuscule group of wealthy Chinese who fly, quite literally, in the face of the law. The first Chinese rich enough to own their own aircraft, they have collided in midair with the Chinese military, which controls the country’s airspace and never contemplated such a fantastic development, much less authorized it. Just asking for permission to take off can involve days of bureaucratic gantlet-running, and still end in rejection.

Getting permission to land can be another hassle altogether.

So black fliers take to the air clandestinely, flitting where the authorities are unlikely to notice or care, occasionally causing havoc on the ground below, risking fines that would send an average Chinese to the poorhouse but which, for most of them, do not have much of a deterrent effect.