Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 21

Jing'an Temple (literally "Temple of Peace and Tranquility") is a Buddhist temple here in Shanghai. The first temple was built in 247, during the Three Kingdoms period. This is not the original location of the temple, which was moved in 1216 from beside the Suzhou Creek. The current temple was rebuilt once in the Qing Dynasty and, as you will be able to tell from the pictures, they are currently doing alot of renovation work.

This is another one of these "oasis in the middle of the city", since there are modern buildings all around it, which you can see in the background of this first picture. This is from the entrance gate, which is quite convenient to the Jing'An temple metro stop.

The main building is right in front (1st photo) and then there are other buildings on either side of the main courtyard.











In the middle of the courtyard is a huge "something" in the middle ... not sure exactly what it is. However, what we did see was kinda interesting although slightly difficult to see in the pictures. People will take a coin and attempt to throw it into the open part above the bit "kettle". You can somewhat see it with the man in front of the 2 ladies in the lower-middle of the second picture. Look at this arm, and you can imagine he has a coin and is attempting to throw it up so that it goes into the open part and then would stay inside of the kettle. You also see the man on the right bending down to pick up his coin, which did not go into the hole. The third picture will give a good view of how large this is!





And common with most of these temples was the incense burning area.

One of the corner towers, with the great architectural details!

There are multiple buildings that contain multiple shrines. This is the statue of the Sakyamuni, which is the first Buddha of Buddhism (according to the plaque that was at the shrine). It is made of white jade from Myanmar (the country formerly known as Burma) and is 3.87 meters tall and weighs in at 11 tons. It is a working temple, as you can see with the monks in the 3rd photo.





In another shrine, there was a whole set of Buddhas.



The largest room that we saw, we didn't get too many pictures of because there was a ceremony going on at the time that we were there. But you can see the seated Buddha on one side.





This is the statue of the Guanyin Bodhisattva, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. It is made out of what is called "thousand-year-camphor" wood. It is a bit lighter than the other one, this one weighing in only at 5 tons for the 6.2 meters tall statue.

This is a BIG seated Buddha! This is the Silver Buddha at the Mahavira Hall. The hall itself is supported by 46 columns and is made entirely out of Teak from Myanmar/Burma. The statue is of the Sakyamuni Buddha sitting on the lotus base in meditation. It is 8.8 meters tall and is made of a whopping 15 tons of silver.

A few more interesting statues (can't tell you what these are) and then the bell which Tom is standing in front of. It is a Ming Dynasty copper bell (Hongwu Bell), weighing 3.5 tons.





Another room with a set of statues, and as we walked around, we found these magnificant doors that were carved wood. There was also a wall that had a bunch of plaster figures on it, but we just were able to peek at it because that room was undergoing renovation.





As with almost every major building or site, there are the lions out front, so here is Susan in front of one of them.