Shanghai's City God Temple, the Chenghuang Miao, is dedicated to the city god, a deity charged with protecting the settlement and with judging the conduct of its people. The present temple dates from the Ming dynasty and was rebuilt after fires and demolition; it has been a place of worship since the fourteenth century and remains one, which distinguishes it from the commercial bazaar that now surrounds it. The two are physically inseparable - the temple sits in the middle of the Yuyuan market district - and most visitors pass through both without quite noticing where one ends.
The temple
The complex is compact and arranged around courtyards: a hall of the mountain gate, a main hall holding the city god and his attendants, and further halls for the goddess of mercy and for the deities of wealth and literature. The decorative work is dense - painted beams, carved brackets, glazed roof tiles, stone lions and incense burners - and much of it is recent restoration in a Ming and Qing idiom. What gives the visit its weight is that people come to pray: offering incense, throwing divination blocks, tying wishes to the railings, and buying paper offerings and amulets from the counters inside.
The bazaar around it
The lanes around the temple have been a market for centuries and remain one of the busiest commercial areas in Shanghai, though what is sold now is aimed squarely at visitors: steamed buns, soup dumplings, candied fruit, silk, fans, tea, jewellery and souvenirs. Two or three of the food shops are genuinely old and worth queueing for, particularly the soup dumpling houses. Just behind the bazaar is the Yu Garden itself, a Ming scholar's garden with rockeries, pavilions, ponds and zigzag bridges, entered on a separate ticket and considerably quieter than the streets outside it.
Practical notes
The temple and the garden are open daily, and both charge admission; the bazaar lanes are free. The area is extremely crowded at weekends, on public holidays and during the Lantern Festival, when the temple and the surrounding streets are decorated and the crowds are dense enough to be uncomfortable. A weekday morning is the only comfortable time. Dress modestly inside the temple halls, ask before photographing worshippers, and note that the nearest subway station is a short walk away, which is the easiest way to arrive.
