Hotels near Jing'an Temple

Jing'an Temple traces its founding to 247 AD, though it moved to this site in 1216 and the current buildings are a reconstruction completed in the 2000s after the temple served as a plastics factory during the Cultural Revolution. The rebuild used Burmese teak and traditional joinery, and the result is deliberately opulent - gold-leaf roofs, a 15-metre silver Guanyin statue and a 3.8-metre jade Buddha weighing 11 tonnes.

The setting is the point. The temple sits directly on top of a metro station in the middle of the Jing'an business district, with glass towers rising on all four sides and traffic on Nanjing West Road running past the gate. Admission is around CNY 50 and the complex takes 45 minutes to walk properly.

Pro Tip: The best photograph is from the pedestrian overpass at the Nanjing West Road junction, which lines up the golden roofs against the office towers behind. Late afternoon puts the sun behind the temple and lights the gold.