---
node: spot_hangzhou_lingyin_temple
type: spot
slug: lingyin_temple
destination: dest_hangzhou
title: "Lingyin Temple"
lead: "Lingyin is one of the largest and wealthiest Buddhist temples in China, founded in 328 in the wooded hills west of West Lake. The cliffs opposite it carry 340 rock carvings from the tenth to fourteenth centuries."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_hangzhou_lingyin_temple.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lingyin_Temple,_Hangzhou_20161003.jpg"
image_author: "Tyg728"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The temple was destroyed and rebuilt some sixteen times; the present halls are mostly nineteenth and twentieth century, but the scale and the setting are the point. The Hall of the Great Sage holds a 24-metre camphor-wood Buddha, carved in 1956. Feilai Feng, the limestone outcrop across the stream, holds the carvings — including a laughing Maitreya that is the most reproduced Buddhist image in China.

## Highlights

The Feilai Feng grottoes need a separate ticket from the temple and are the older, rarer half — see them first, in the morning light. Incense is provided free at the gate; buying more outside is unnecessary. Longjing village up the hill grows the tea of the same name and is the calm end of the visit.