Chenghuang Temple 城隍庙

Chenghuang Temple literally means city god temple. This is the temple dedicated to the guardian diety of the city of Hangzhou. As a residence of the city god, they made a great choice to build the temple on top of Wushan hill. That way the city god can oversee his people. The buildings here are very new and were only built in this millennium. I can’t seem to find out whether this was just a reconstruction of an old building though.

The Chenghuang Temple features traditional Chinese architecture featuring Ming and Qing styles. The ground floor naturally has the mandatory Buddha statue, the city god himself. The statue is magnificent golden sculpture, however, this place seems to lack a certain authenticity and may probably have been built solely for the purpose of tourism. There was a friendly man at the entrance who surprisingly asked for money. Not that he was poor, but he was a collector of notes, upon knowing where I came from, he asked me if I had any bills. Unfortunately, I don’t carry any with me. He didn’t ask my friends for bills since he already has them in his collection.

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