Discover Shanghai
Jade Buddha Temple
玉佛禅寺
A working Chan monastery of about seventy monks, built in 1882 around two Buddha figures carved from Burmese white jade. A major 2017-2021 engineering project slid the whole main hall 30 metres sideways to open up the courtyard, and the vegetarian restaurant is a destination in itself.
The story
What makes this place special
The temple exists because of two statues. In the 1880s the monk Huigen was given five jade Buddhas in Burma by an overseas Chinese merchant, Chen Jun-Pu, and brought two of them back to Shanghai, where a temple was founded for them in 1882 at Jiangwan. The present complex was built on land donated by the industrialist Sheng Xuanhuai between 1918 and 1928, which is why a nominally traditional temple sits in a dense city block. The seated jade Buddha is about 1.95m tall and weighs around three tonnes; the reclining jade figure, representing the Buddha's death, is much smaller. A far larger marble reclining Buddha donated from Singapore also stands in the temple and is routinely mistaken for the jade one.
What you’ll discover
A compact, busy, working monastery of yellow-walled halls on three courtyards, wedged among apartment blocks, with a constant traffic of worshippers, monks and incense. You pass through the entrance halls to the main hall, then upstairs to the chamber holding the seated jade Buddha - photography of it is prohibited and that rule is enforced - and separately to the small reclining jade figure and the big marble one. There is a hall of five hundred arhats and a sutra library. The vegetarian canteen and restaurant on site are a real part of the visit for Chinese visitors rather than an afterthought.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- The jade Buddha is upstairs in its own small room and you cannot photograph it. People spend an hour in the courtyards and leave without going up, because the stair is unobtrusive and the signage is poor - ask for Yufo, the jade Buddha.
- The large reclining Buddha you see first is marble, not jade, and modern. The jade reclining figure is small and in a different room; knowing that saves the standard disappointment.
- Eat here. The temple's vegetarian restaurant is one of the better-known in Shanghai and the cheap noodle counter downstairs is a genuine local lunch, not a tourist facility.
- Come on the first or fifteenth of the lunar month only if you want the full devotional scene - the queues are long and the halls are packed. Otherwise an ordinary weekday morning is calm.
- The whole complex was moved and rebuilt in a major engineering project in recent years, so some halls are newer than they look; the fabric is early 20th century at best, and the value of the visit is the religious life rather than the architecture.
- It is a 10-minute walk from Jiangning Road or Changshou Road metro, and the surrounding streets have nothing to detain you - treat it as a focused hour, not an afternoon.
When to come
Early on a weekday morning, when the monks are chanting and the halls are not crowded. Avoid lunar first and fifteenth days, Lunar New Year and Buddha's birthday unless the crowd is the attraction.
Getting around
Mixed. The courtyards are flat paved and short distances, so the ground-floor halls are reachable with some help over the raised door thresholds that every hall has. The jade Buddha itself is up a flight of stairs with no lift, so the central object of the temple is out of reach for a wheelchair user and a hard climb with a bad knee. The site is small, which helps, but it is crowded and narrow in places, and incense smoke is constant.
Worth knowing before you go
Eat at the temple's 松月楼-style vegetarian dining hall - Shanghainese queue for the noodles, and it is far cheaper than the tourist restaurants near the Bund.
Compare established providers
Check live tours and tickets
Search for Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai. Prices, availability, payment and confirmation are handled by the booking provider.
China Travel Select does not take payment or create the reservation. Confirm the exact name, dates, inclusions and cancellation rules on the provider’s page.
Take a closer look
Maps, videos & more
Prices and hours change. These are the places to check on the day.
