[Only In SH] The Myth Beneath Shanghai's Fastest Roads

Editor's Note

Everyone knows the Bund. Fewer people know the sound of mahjong echoing through a Shanghai lane at dusk.

This Only In SH series explores the side of Shanghai that often escapes travel guides – the old alleyways, neighborhood eateries, fading shop signs, strange local habits, forgotten stories and everyday rituals that continue to shape the city beneath its modern image.

Shanghai has many urban myths, and one of the most famous ones lives beneath its elevated highways.

Beneath neon lights and engines on one of Shanghai's roaring elevated highways is a massive pillar covered in shimmering golden dragons stretching skyward like a creature in flight.

The "Dragon Pillar" at Yan'an Road and the North-South Elevated Road is one of Shanghai's urban legends.

Like many Shanghai items, it has a backstory.

Where the Urban Myth Began

Ask around, and you'll hear whispers.

Back in the 1990s, when Shanghai was racing toward its futuristic skyline, construction crews hit a mysterious obstacle. No matter what they tried, they could not drive the foundation piles into the ground at this exact spot.

Why?

Some said they had struck a dragon vein, a powerful spiritual artery in traditional Chinese geomancy. It appeared that the land resisted any disturbance.

The rumor goes that, in desperation, engineers invited an eminent monk to perform rituals. Only after this intervention did the piles finally go in. The golden dragons wrapping the pillar became a symbolic gesture to calm, contain, or perhaps honor whatever force lay beneath.

It is the kind of story Shanghainese people love: a little mystical, a little dramatic, and just believable enough to repeat over dinner.

But bridge expert Zhang Genggeng, who was involved in the project, later dismissed the rumor. As Jiefang Daily reported, Zhang said the story about "performing religious rites" was popular among Shanghainese people, but was completely groundless.

The Truth Behind the Dragon Pillar

According to Zhang, the problem was not dragons. It was geology.

The soil layers at that exact intersection were unusually dense and difficult. The original construction team lacked experience with such deep and complex piling work. Once a more specialized engineering team stepped in, they changed the approach: heavier hammers, continuous water lubrication, and nonstop 18-hour work cycles.

Within just over a month, all 36 massive steel piles, each driven more than 60 meters underground, were successfully installed.

No rituals required. Just persistence, expertise, and a bit of industrial grit.

So why the dragons?

The pillar itself is enormous, five meters in diameter and towering over 30 meters high. Without decoration, it would have been a concrete giant, awkward and intrusive in a busy urban junction.

Enter the artist. Inspired by the idea that Shanghai's highways flow like a living organism, sculptor Zhao Zhirong imagined the entire elevated road system as a giant dragon coursing through the city: dynamic, powerful, and always moving. The pillar became its symbolic heart.

The design wraps the column in stylized dragons inspired not by flashy imperial imagery but by ancient Bronze Age motifs, subtle, archaic, and deeply rooted in Chinese visual tradition.

Look closely, and you will notice it is not just nine dragons. There are many, along with phoenixes, sun, and moon elements, layered into a quiet narrative of balance and motion.

What the Dragon Pillar Really Represents

What makes the Dragon Pillar so fascinating is not whether the legend is true.

It is that both versions, the myth and the engineering reality, coexist effortlessly.

That is Shanghai.

A city where cutting-edge infrastructure rises from centuries-old cultural imagination. Where people commute on multilayer highways built with scientific precision while casually sharing stories about dragons beneath the pavement.

In Shanghai, progress does not erase tradition. It decorates it.

Next time you pass that golden pillar, you can choose your version of the story.