Longhua Temple, an ancient temple with the longest history and largest scale in Shanghai, was built in 242 AD. The temple keeps Buddhist scripture, gold seals and Buddhist statues of the Tang, Five, Ming and Qing Dynasties. At night on every New Year eve the ceremony of Striking the Longhua Evening Bell is conducted here and is well-known in the country and abroad. The construction here keeps the original feature of the Song Dynasty Zan Sect Jialan seven-hall design, regarded as a prime specimen of Southern Song architecture.

Yufo Si (the Jade Buddha Temple), boasting the second of the city's most important religious sites, is a monastery built in 1882 to enshrine two magnificent statues which had been brought from Burma. Each of these Buddha is carved from a single piece of white jade: the larger statue, a reclining figure, is displayed downstairs, while the smaller, but far more exquisite, sitting statue is housed in a room upstairs as part of an extensive collection of Buddhist sutras and paintings. monish balaji.