With the original temple dating back to CE 1216, the much-restored Jing'an Temple (静安寺, Jìng’ān Sì; 1686-1688 West Nanjing Rd, 南京西路1686-1688号) was here well before all the audacious skyscrapers and glitzy shopping malls. Today it stands like a shimmering mirage in defiance of West Nanjing Rd’s soaring modern architecture: a sacred portal to the Buddhist world that partially, at least, underpins this metropolis of 24 million souls. Step through the big gates and you'll be transported into a different realm, with chanting monks, incense-filled air and the melodic sounds of wind chimes.
Constructed largely of Burmese teak, the temple has some impressive statues, including a massive 8.8m-high, 15-tonne silver Buddha in the main Mahavira Hall with 46 pillars; a 3.87m-high Burmese white-jade Sakyamuni in the side halls; and a five-tonne Guanyin statue in the Guanyin Hall, carved from a 1000-year-old camphor tree. It still rattles away to the sounds of construction, while in the bunker beneath the main hall is an unfinished space, housing 18 glittering luóhàn (arhats), but little else.
Khi Vehdu, who ran Jing'an Temple in the 1930s, was one of the most remarkable figures of the time. The nearly 2m-tall abbot had a large following as well as seven concubines, each of whom had a house and a car. During the Cultural Revolution, the temple was stripped of its Buddhist statues and transformed into a plastics factory before burning to the ground in 1972.
The complex has been designed to incorporate shops and restaurants around its perimeter, which stretches around the block, and the metro runs right underneath. Don’t miss the excellent, inexpensive Jen Dow Vegetarian Restaurant (153 Yuyuan Rd, 愚园路153号) at the rear of the temple, serving up mushroom-laden noodles in a simple space.
The temple gets packed during Lunar New Year, the Festival of Bathing Buddha (on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month), plus during full moons.