Shanghai Jing'an Temple 上海静安寺

It's a weekend Sunday and we took the subway to Jing'an Temple station using Metro Line 2. Our main goal is to visit the Jing'an Temple 静安寺. We arrived at the station without any hassle and ask around for the nearest exit to Jing'an Temple. It was exit number 1.

Upon exiting the station, we found quite a number of people were queuing at the temple. We were amazed that the temple is so popular that people had to queue up to enter! This was actually not the case. It is actually a booth opening to sell Vegetarian mooncake because it is going to be mid-autumn festival soon. The entrance to the temple is some walking distance after taking a left turn at the exit.

Entrance fee was RMB10 per adult, children is free entrance.

Entrance ticket

The first temple was built in 247 AD, at the time of the Kingdom of Wu, during the Three Kingdoms period. Originally located beside Suzhou Creek, it was relocated to its current site in 1216 during the Song Dynasty. The current temple was rebuilt once in the Qing Dynasty.

Entrance of the temple

During the Cultural Revolution, it was converted into a plastics factory. It was converted back to an active temple following reconstruction in 1983, and most recently completely renovated in late 2003.

Just outside the temple grounds in between a new and modern shopping mall and temple - there is a tall pillar with 3 golden lions perching on it. It reminds me of the Asoka thing that I learned in history books.

Golden lions pillar

The middle building of this temple is still under construction work. One could only see the stairs case leading to it and also catch a glimpse of the huge wooden pillars and beams that are meant to form the structure of this temple building.

In the middle of this temple building is the large area of temple courtyard. Right in the center there is a large steel urn kind of structure.

Temple Courtyard

To the east of the main hall is the Guanyin Hall. In the center of the hall is a statue of the goddess made out of camphor wood. Standing on a lotus-shaped base, it is 6.2 meters tall and weighs 5 tons.

I could see that the whole statue of this Goddess of Mercy is carved out from one single piece of wood. Of course the notice below confirmed my observation. The wood used is Camphor wood.

Camphor wood Goddess of Mercy

Many people were throwing coins at this urn and lantern type of structure made of steel. They tried to make the coin pass through the hole and into the base of this structure. I noticed that there is an opening at the bottom of this structure.

The coins that went in will be passed into the base of the structure through this opening.

On the opposite building that housed the Goddess of Mercy is a statue of Buddha.

After visiting the halls at both side of this temple ground, we took the staircase that led to the upper floor of the buildings. The upper floors are linked and one could walk from one end to the other. All together the 3 building form a U shaped upper floors.

Carving on the posts and also the ceiling beam

More carving on the walls of the veranda

Temple courtyard seen from upper floors

The view from the upper floor allows one to catch a good overall scenery of this temple. There was a light wind that rang the small steel bells that is attached to the urn and lantern like structure below. It was quite at atmosphere of serenity.

The doors in the upper floor are all wooden doors carved with beautiful figures.

We left the temple and headed for lunch after spending few hours here. Lunch was easily found in this place because the surrounding area of Jing'an there are malls and restaurants.