Top 10 Monasteries in China
China's monastic landscape is overwhelmingly Buddhist, layered over Daoist and folk traditions, and shaped by waves of imperial patronage, persecution, and revival. Buddhism arrived along the Silk Road in the first century and by the Tang dynasty had produced great monastic centres on the sacred mountains and in the capitals. The Chan (Zen) school was born here; Tibetan Buddhism took root in the north and west under Mongol and Qing patronage. After the upheavals of the twentieth century, many temples were rebuilt and reopened as working monasteries or major pilgrimage sites. These ten span the country and its traditions.
1. Shaolin Temple, Henan
Founded in 495 at the foot of Mount Song, Shaolin is the legendary cradle of Chan Buddhism and of Chinese martial arts. The Indian monk Bodhidharma is said to have meditated here facing a cave wall for nine years. The Pagoda Forest, with its hundreds of brick funerary stupas of abbots and eminent monks, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today the temple is a global symbol of kung fu, drawing huge crowds and supporting martial-arts academies.
2. Hanging Monastery (Xuankong Si), Shanxi
Built into a sheer cliff face below Mount Heng around 491, the Hanging Monastery appears to defy gravity, its halls and walkways supported on slender wooden posts driven into the rock. Uniquely, it honours Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism under one roof. Suspended some fifty metres above the valley, it is one of the most photographed religious structures in China.
3. Labrang Monastery, Gansu
Labrang, founded in 1709 in the town of Xiahe, is one of the six great monasteries of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and the most important Tibetan religious centre outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. It once housed several thousand monks and maintains six colleges of learning. Its great prayer-wheel circuit, the longest in the world, draws pilgrims who walk the entire perimeter.
4. Lingyin Temple, Hangzhou
Founded in 328 beside the West Lake, Lingyin ("Temple of the Soul's Retreat") is one of the largest and wealthiest Chan Buddhist temples in China. The hillside opposite is carved with hundreds of stone Buddhist figures dating from the tenth to fourteenth centuries, including the famous laughing Maitreya. The Hall of the Great Heroes contains a colossal gilded statue of Sakyamuni.
5. Famen Temple, Shaanxi
Famen, near Xi'an, is famous for a relic discovered in 1987 beneath its collapsed pagoda: a finger bone venerated as a relic of the Buddha, sealed there in the ninth century along with a hoard of Tang imperial treasures. The Tang underground palace and its golden reliquaries make Famen one of the most significant archaeological and pilgrimage sites in China.
6. Wutai Shan monasteries, Shanxi
Mount Wutai, the holiest of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains, is dedicated to the bodhisattva Manjushri and crowned with dozens of monasteries, some founded as early as the first century. The cluster, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, includes Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist temples side by side; Nanchan and Foguang temples preserve the oldest surviving timber buildings in China, from the eighth and ninth centuries.
7. Po Lin Monastery, Hong Kong
Founded in 1906 on Lantau Island, Po Lin is a major Chan Buddhist monastery best known for the Tian Tan Buddha, a thirty-four-metre bronze seated Buddha completed in 1993 that dominates the surrounding hills. A working monastery with a famous vegetarian dining hall, it has become one of Hong Kong's most visited religious sites, reached by a dramatic cable car.
8. Tashilhunpo Monastery, Tibet (Xizang)
Founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama, Tashilhunpo in Shigatse is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lamas and one of the six great Gelug monasteries. Its vast complex of gilded roofs shelters a twenty-six-metre statue of the Maitreya Buddha, the largest gilded copper statue in the world, and the jewelled tombs of successive Panchen Lamas.
9. Hualin Temple, Guangzhou
Tracing its origins to a fifth-century foundation associated with Bodhidharma's arrival in China by sea, Hualin is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Guangzhou. Its Hall of Five Hundred Arhats, rebuilt in the Qing dynasty, contains hundreds of individually carved gilded statues, a remarkable expression of Chinese devotional sculpture.
10. Yonghe Temple (Lama Temple), Beijing
The Yonghegong, a former imperial residence converted into a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in 1744 under the Qianlong Emperor, is the most important Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing. Its Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses houses an eighteen-metre standing Maitreya carved from a single trunk of white sandalwood, one of the tallest such statues in the world.
Planning Your Visit
China's monasteries are spread across an enormous country. The Henan and Shanxi sites (Shaolin, Hanging Monastery, Wutai Shan) form a northern circuit; Hangzhou and Guangzhou are easy from the coastal cities; Labrang and the Tibetan monasteries require longer travel and, for the Tibet Autonomous Region, special permits. Many active temples charge admission and close in the late afternoon. Use the map to plan regional clusters and gauge the distances between the sacred mountains and the great cities.