Discover Hangzhou
Lingyin Temple and Feilai Feng
灵隐寺 / 飞来峰
Hangzhou's great Chan Buddhist monastery, founded in 328 AD, set below a limestone outcrop carved with hundreds of Song-dynasty Buddhist figures and grottoes. Entry became free in December 2025, with timed reservations replacing tickets.
The story
What makes this place special
Lingyin, the Temple of the Soul's Retreat, is traditionally dated to 328 CE and credited to the monk Huili. Under the Wuyue kings in the tenth century it was reportedly the largest monastery in the region, with over three thousand monks, and in the Southern Song it was one of the ten chief Chan temples of the Jiangnan. It has been destroyed and rebuilt at least sixteen times and most of what stands is late Qing; it survived the Cultural Revolution because local people and Zhejiang University students physically blocked a demolition in 1966 and Zhou Enlai then had it protected. It is also the home temple of Ji Gong, the wine-drinking folk-hero monk.
What you’ll discover
You pass through the Feilai Feng grotto area before you reach the temple, and that is the older and more remarkable half: a limestone crag whose cliffs and caves hold 153 niches and over 470 carvings, mostly Northern Song and Yuan, including a big laughing Budai ringed by arhats, and a cave where a crack in the roof drops a single blade of light known as 'one thread of heaven'. The temple itself then climbs a terraced axis of five halls - Heavenly Kings, the Mahavira hall with a 24.6m wooden Sakyamuni carved in 1956, the Medicine Buddha hall, the Dharma hall and the upper Huayan hall - with a pair of stone sutra pillars from 969 beside the first hall and the Ji Gong hall and the swastika-plan Hall of 500 Arhats off to the sides.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- There are two tickets, bought in sequence: one for the Feilai Feng scenic area and a second, separate one at a kiosk inside for the temple itself. People regularly get to the temple steps and find they have only bought the first.
- The carvings are the part visitors skip, because the path funnels them towards the temple. Turn off along the stream and the cliff base at Feilai Feng and work the niches - they are the oldest things on the site by six hundred years.
- Carry on uphill past the temple. Beyond Lingyin the same valley holds Yongfu and Taoguang temples, which are quiet, wooded and almost empty, and Faxi/Upper Tianzhu further on. Nearly everyone turns round at the Arhat hall.
- Come before 8.30am and you will share the main hall with monks and local worshippers rather than coach groups; mid-morning to mid-afternoon the axis is genuinely packed.
- Free incense is handed out at the temple gate - you do not need to buy it from the stalls on the approach road.
When to come
Early morning on a weekday, both for the crowds and because low light through the valley trees is when Feilai Feng photographs well. Rain actually suits the site - wet stone, mist in the valley and far fewer people. Avoid the first and fifteenth of the lunar month and the big Buddhist festivals, when local worshippers fill it.
Getting around
Hard. The temple is built up a hillside as a series of terraces, and each hall is reached by a broad flight of stone steps, so the main axis cannot be done in a wheelchair and is tiring with a bad knee - there is no lift and no bypass to the upper halls. The Feilai Feng valley path along the stream is comparatively flat and paved and is the manageable part, but the caves and cliff niches involve uneven rock and steps. A visitor with limited mobility can realistically see the valley, the first hall or two and the forecourt.
Worth knowing before you go
Non-mainland visitors must enter passport details when reserving, and carry the same passport at the gate. Daily caps are 35,000 on weekdays and 65,000 on public holidays, so holiday slots vanish quickly - book the moment the window opens. The Feilai Feng carvings on the walk in are the real highlight; most groups rush past them.
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