Huabiao

At the top of the cap sits a mythical creature called the denglong (Chinese: 蹬龙), one of the "Nine sons of the dragon", which is said to have the habit of watching the sky.

Classical texts in China attribute the beginning of the huabiao to Shun, a legendary leader traditionally dated to the 23rd–22nd century BC.

However, tradition holds that by the mid-Xia dynasty, the king had moved the bangmu in front of the palace, in order to control public criticism.

[2] It is thought that, in their use on spirit roads, the huabiao replaced the ornate que towers, which were commonly used during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 AD).

In the early 20th century, the huabiao, in a Modernist form, was incorporated into the developing vocabulary of a modern Chinese architectural style.

Examples of these modernist re-interpretations of the huabiao can be seen in front of a variety of institutions built during that period, such as Tongji University in Shanghai, or the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing.

For example, Xinghai Square in Dalian, which was built in the 1990s, incorporated a single huabiao at its centre, to commemorate China's resuming sovereignty on Hong Kong.