Sheshan

Sheshan hill with the observatory and the She Shan Basilica

She Shan (Chinese: 佘山; pinyin: Shé Shān) is a 328 ft (100m) hill in the city of Shanghai in eastern China. It is summounted by the Our Lady of China Catholic church, She Shan Basilica which was built there between 1925 and 1935 following its establishment as a chapel in the 1850s by European missionaries. Services there are held in Latin. The road to the top of She Shan hill represents the Via Dolorosa (The Way of Suffering) that Christ took to his crucifixion. Every May pilgrims flock to the chapel and the holy road in their hundreds.

The hill also houses a Jesuit observatory which displays, in addition to scientific equipment of the modern era, a replica of a Han dynasty earthquake monitoring device, consisting of a jar with dragon heads around the outside and a pendulum inside. Each dragon has a steel ball in its mouth. When an earthquake occurred the pendulum would swing, knock a dragon causing its mouth to open and a ball to drop out and thereby point out the quake's direction.