After setting the pace in FP1, Oliver Rowland stormed to a maiden Formula E pole position in Sanya, beating reigning champion Jean-Eric Vergne to the top spot for Nissan e.dams.
Rowland completed his first qualifying run in Group Three, ending initial qualifying as the fourth fastest runner, 0.288s slower than team-mate Sebastien Buemi who posted the quickest time of the four group stages with a 1m 07.670s lap.
Joining the Nissan e.dams pair in Super Pole were Audi's Daniel Abt, DS Techeetah's Vergne and the BMW i Andretti Motorsport duo of Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Sims.
As the slowest of the top six runners, Abt opened Super Pole and failed to impress, posting a lacklustre 1m 08.331s lap to claim provisional pole position as the session's first runner.
Abt's best efforts were swiftly rubbished by Vergne, with the DS Techeetah driver going purple in all three sectors to shoot to the top of the timesheets, with the reigning champion lapping the 2.236km-long Sanya Street Circuit in 1m 08.045s.
With Nissan e.dams showing pace in both first and second practice, Rowland demonstrated that this was no fluke in his Super Pole run, eclipsing the best efforts of Vergne to shoot to the top of the timesheets, beating the Frenchman's time by 0.1s.
While it was Sims who was next to place his bid for pole position, confusion reigned when da Costa took to the track as the next driver to stake his claim, with his BMW team-mate having a gearbox problem that meant that he was unable to compete in the top six shootout.
Sims' technical problem left one less car in the way between Rowland and pole position and when da Costa failed to beat the British rookie's best time, ending up 0.177s off the pace, it was clear that a Nissan car would start from pole.
The identity of the Nissan driver who would start on pole remained a mystery until Buemi took to the track and while the Season Two champion enjoyed a clean run through Turns 1 and 2, understeer into Turn 3 and an eventual crash into the barriers removed him from contention.
Buemi's collision handed Rowland pole position while Vergne, who was the second runner in Super Pole, secured a place on the front-row of the grid.
Da Costa completed Super Pole with the third fastest time while Abt was fourth, with Buemi and Sims forming the third row of the grid in fifth and sixth.
Outside of Super Pole, Andre Lotterer was the best of the rest, qualifying in seventh in the second DS Techeetah while he was followed by Jerome d'Ambrosio in eighth, with Pascal Wehrlein and Lucas di Grassi completing the top 10.
Hong Kong race winner Edoardo Mortara ended qualifying in 11th fastest for Venturi and was followed by Robin Frijns, Stoffel Vandoorne, Jose Maria Lopez and team-mate Felipe Massa who completed the top 15.
Championship leader Sam Bird qualified in only 16th place for Envision Virgin Racing as the first overall runner in qualifying while he was followed by Tom Dillmann, Felipe Nasr, Oliver Turvey, Mitch Evans, Gary Paffett and Nelson Piquet Jr who propped up the timesheets.
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