Shanghai Confucian Temple

The Shanghai Confucian Temple (上海文庙, Shànghǎi Wénmiào) at 215 Wenmiao Road was the Qing-dynasty county school temple of Shanghai, and it is the only temple in urban Shanghai dedicated to Confucius. It has been closed for renovation since October 2021, and no reopening date turned up in recent sources. Its Sunday second-hand book market, long a reason for Shanghai readers to come, now meets elsewhere.

The first temple was begun in 1294, under the Yuan dynasty, near the county office, and was moved several times. In the 1850s the Small Swords Society used the Minglun Hall of the earlier temple as a headquarters. Chinese Wikipedia dates this to the uprising of 1853, and English Wikipedia says 1851 to 1855. The earlier site was largely destroyed, and the temple was rebuilt on its present site in the mid-1850s.

In 1932 the Zunjing Pavilion became a municipal library with more than 15,000 books, described as Shanghai’s first public library. After 1949 the temple was listed as a district protected site in 1959. It was damaged in the 1960s and 1970s, when buildings such as the Zunjing Pavilion were pulled down, and partly restored from 1979. A full renovation between April 1997 and September 1999 rebuilt halls and restored the Qing-era layout. The temple was designated a Shanghai municipal protected site in 2002.

The complex has two north-south axes: the temple axis, with the Lingxing Gate, Dacheng Gate, Dacheng Hall and Chongsheng Shrine, and the school axis, with the Minglun Hall and the Zunjing Pavilion. A garden lies to the east. Dacheng Hall is about 14 metres high with a double-eaved roof. A brick inscription on its ridge, “Haibin Zou Lu”, was written by Lin Zexu (林则徐), and the walls around the hall carry the text of the Analects on blue-stone tablets.

From 1986 a second-hand book market was held every Sunday on the square in front of Dacheng Hall, and by the 1990s it was Shanghai’s best-known. When the temple closed in October 2021, the market moved out. Many stallholders went to commercial buildings near Yu Garden. Shanghai Observer reported in February 2026 that the market had reopened in January, trading from 6 a.m. on Sundays on the fourth floor of the Fumin Building. A newspaper essay from the same month counted fewer than twenty stalls there on 18 January, with perhaps ten selling real second-hand books, and mentioned a dispute between old and new landlords. Hours differ between reports, so check before going.