Zhenru Temple

Zhenru Temple (真如寺, Zhēnrú Sì) is a Buddhist temple in Zhenru, Putuo District, and its main hall is the oldest wooden building in Shanghai. The city government calls it the only surviving wooden structure in the city from the Yuan dynasty, about 700 years old. The rest of the temple is later, and the hall is the reason to come.

The temple began in the Southern Song as Zhenru Yuan (真如院). The sources differ slightly on what the monk Yong’an did in the Jiading era (1208-1224): English Wikipedia says he renamed it Zhenru Si, Chinese Wikipedia says he founded the Yuan then. The present temple dates from 1320, under the Yuan dynasty. English Wikipedia adds that the monk Miaoxin moved it to its current site that year.

The hall’s date rests on an ink inscription in the frame naming the seventh year of the Yanyou era, which is 1320. Accounts of when it was found vary: 1950, 1963-64 and 1979 all appear. The hall is three bays wide and three deep, close to square, with a single-eave hip-and-gable roof carried on 16 timber pillars. English Wikipedia gives its size as 13.4 metres by 13. Most of the beams, brackets and main frame are original, even though the building has been repaired several times.

The temple was destroyed in fighting in 1860 and rebuilt in 1895 by the monk Nianlun. In that rebuilding the hall was changed to a double-eave, five-bay form. Repairs in 1963-64 returned it to a single eave, closer to the Yuan shape. After 1949 the hall served as a commune library and a meeting hall, and later as a museum store. From 1979 the temple was shown as an ancient-architecture exhibit, and in 1991 it went back to religious use.

The hall became a Shanghai municipal protected site in 1959 and a national key protected site in 1996. In front of it stands a ginkgo about 650 years old. In October 2025 the tree and the hall were placed together on the first national list of paired cultural-relic and ancient-tree sites, the only Shanghai entry among 28. Inside, a seated jade Shakyamuni about 2.2 metres high was donated by the Singaporean monk Xingren in 1991 or 1992, depending on the source.

No official page for hours or tickets was found, so check before you go. This is a working temple, so keep voices low.