It's real and in the city of Chengdu

Here's a thread about it in another sub

In that thread is this comment:

Chinese traffic light staging ia confusing as hell. However, those areas are called 等待區, or waiting areas, and are designed to reduce traffic backup so it dosen’t flow back into the previous intersection. For example, if you’re going foward, and current staging for your lane is turning left (you cant go fowards because traffic on your right is heading left) you can head into the waiting area right up to where the horizontal-crossing cars are (on the image it’s marked 直行等待區) and when the light turns green you can move forwards quicker and get more people across the intersection.

The waiting area is controlled by another set of connected traffic lights.

In the diagram I sketched https://www.reddit.com/user/alcyona229/comments/a2nlq4/_/?st=JP872M7Z&sh=4ba0d773, you would wait in the shaded area, with the red traffic blocking you. However, when the light turns green and the red traffic stops, you can move fowards.

It’s slightly more complicated with four areas, but he same concept. It’s actually really helpful for traffic, since it allows more people to pass through per cycle.