Jade Buddha Temple 玉佛禅寺

On Anyuan Road, in the heart of a busy district, stands a Buddhist temple that has offered a quiet counterpoint to the city for over a century. The Jade Buddha Temple takes its name from the two jade images it houses, and it is counted among Shanghai's ten leading visitor attractions as well as a key Buddhist temple for the Han ethnic group, a status granted in 1983.

Its story begins in 1882, when the monk Huigen returned from a pilgrimage through Myanmar with five jade Buddhas. Two of them, one seated and one reclining, stayed in Shanghai, first in a thatched shelter and later in a temple near the old Jiangwan station. In 1918 the fourth abbot, Kecheng, began the present complex on Anyuan Road; it took ten years, and his Linji Chan lineage gave the temple the name it bears today.

The halls line up along a central axis, from the screen wall through the Hall of Heavenly Kings and the Grand Hall to the Bore Hall, with the Jade Buddha Hall above. The seated jade Buddha there is the temple's treasure; the Reclining Buddha Hall holds a small image carved from one block of Myanmar jade and a larger one brought from Singapore in 1990.

Don't miss

• Seated jade Buddha in the Jade Buddha Hall, the temple's treasure
• Two reclining Buddhas: small Myanmar jade, large white marble
• Stone engravings of sutras and Guanyin's thirty-two manifestations
• Thirty-metre carved screen wall before the mountain gate
• A bowl of vegetarian noodles at the temple restaurant

Visiting tips

Many local visitors finish their time here with a bowl of vegetarian noodles at the temple restaurant, and the vegetarian mooncakes are well known. Follow the central axis from the screen wall to the Jade Buddha Hall so you see the halls in order.