The Huainanzi says: “Yao set up a drum for those who dared to remonstrate. Shun raised a post for criticism.” (尧置敢谏之鼓，舜立诽谤之木) Asked what Yao’s post for criticism was, the scholar Cui Bao answered in his Notes on Things Old and New (古今注): “It is today’s huabiao.” Some called it the marker post, he explained, “because it shows that the king accepts remonstrance,” and also to mark the roads.
Huabiao columns stand in front of Tiananmen in Beijing.