Xilin Temple 上海松江西林禅寺

Our next destination was the Xilin Temple 西林禅寺. This was a small temple. Initially we intend to go to another place the Songjiang Mosque 清真寺 but did not find it. We managed to find this one instead.

The arch that shows the way to the temple

Within the temple there is a pagoda. The XiLin Pagoda (Xi Lin Ta) was built during the Southern Song dynasty during 1127--1279. The temple's website can be found at: http://www.xilinsi.org/

Entrance photo of XiLin Temple

Entrance ticket is RMB6 per adult. Children is free admission.

Entrance ticket

To the east of Xita Lane, Middle Zhongshan Road in Songjiang County, stands a 40 meters high octagonal pagoda of brick and wood structure, which was formerly called Chong'en Pagoda and Yuanying Pagoda. The 7-storey pagoda is widely known as Xilin Pagoda for Xilin Temple lies beside.

Below shows the main compound of the temple right after you enter the main entrance. To the left and right, there are 2 separated temple buildings. One of them houses the drum and the other a bell.

The poster behind shows some on-going reconstruction project

Behind the main temp building is the XiLin pagoda. There are 2 side corridors leading the the courtyard behind the main temple building. Found a temple urn that is quite old, a bit rusty but has the temple name carved into the steel body. This urn is extremely beautifully adorned with small bells, etc. I quite like the look of this item although I sensed that the temple people do not really bother with it. They just left it there idling by itself without much of a usage.

Beautiful and Ancient Temple Urn

The pagoda sits right in the middle of the courtyard. The ground level for the pagoda is also lower level than the ground at the courtyard. It forms a sort of a mot surrounding the pagoda. Difference is there is no water inside the mot.

The sign board signified XiLin Pagoda

XiLin Pagoda was erected in the period under reign of Xian Chun of the Southern Song Dynasty (1265-1274) and was reconstructed in 1387 (the 20th year under reign of Hong Wu of the Ming Dynasty), 1613 (the 41st year under reign of Wan Li of the Ming Dynasty), 1793 (the 58th year under reign of Qian Long of the Qing Dynasty) and 1840 (the 20th year under reign of Dao Guang of the Qing Dynasty respectively. This elegant and exquisite pagoda is decorated with delicate brick statues of Buddha.

Old pagoda shape before reconstruction & pagoda entrance

It seems that in the past (prior to 1992), the pagoda was not in the shape that we see today. The shape is long brick structure pointing up like shown in the snap shot photo I have captured in one of the bulletin mentioning the history of this pagoda. I think they have built a shell that covered the whole pagoda eventually. You can still see some open up hole to show the original pagoda's buddha carving at every floor of this pagoda.

Apart from the pagoda, the temple surrounding is actually not that interesting. The monks and people of temple still lives here and you can see them around. The time we arrived was nearly lunch time, so we could see the kitchen is busy with people preparing the vegetarian food.

We just wandered around the courtyard and went 360 deg around the pagoda. There is another temple building just behind the other side of the pagoda.

On the way out, we took opportunity to climb up the temple at the side - which houses the big wooden drum. The drum is really big and actually they charge a fee for people to hit the drum. When we were here there was not anyone around to tend to this drum.

On top of this temple's roof is a colorful checkerboard like kind of flowery decoration. It is adorned with ancient Sanskrit words, I think. Not that I know how to read Sanskrit.

We went on to the other temple building at the opposite of this temple building that houses the drum. These two buildings are a symmetrical image of each other. Except the only difference is this temple building houses a big bell instead. The roof is adorned with the same decoration.

Roof colorful decoration and wood carving

Trying to ring the bell

Scene of the temple seen from the height of this bell temple

From the height of both the temples, we could see a good view of the XiLin pagoda. The pagoda rose magnificently against the background of XiLin Temple.

View of the pagoda

One can also see the surrounding area outside of the temple walls. The busy streets bustling with cars, bicycles and pedestrian getting about with their daily life. Indeed live beyond the temple wall is another thing compared to the quietness and tranquility of XiLin Temple.