Just where the main East West Yan’An road intersects with the main North South road there is an unusual pillar with striking golden carved dragons circling it.
It turns out that there is a story behind it. A modern day legend. I’ve heard various similar versions – here’s a combination of them:
Back when they were building this important intersection in the mid-late 90s the construction hit a snag. When digging the foundations all the machinery reached a point where it couldn’t dig any deeper. The construction crew consulted geologists in case the rock there was particularly hard. It turned out to be the same rock as everywhere else – and certainly nothing that the excavators should have been able to deal with. Time went on, with the construction delay causing concerns at many levels of the city’s politicians, not least of all because of the costs that were mounting every day. It’s not as if they had a choice to move the intersection of the roads…
Eventually, almost at their wit’s end, those in charge of construction turned to the lead priest at the local Jing-an temple to take a look. He did and quickly proclaimed that the problem was the dragon that was sleeping under the proposed site of the new pillar. The construction crews implored him to help. He didn’t want to, afraid that disturbing the dragon would cause bad luck to befall those involved. More and more senior people put pressure on him and he eventually gave in and performed a sort of dragon exorcism (I’m quite sure it isn’t actually called that….).
A matter of weeks later the priest died and bad luck affected many of those involved. To appease the dragon, clearly pretty unhappy with having to change his sleeping place, they decided to honour him with a beautiful pillar covered in dragons.