Yue Fei Temple (岳王庙)

Temple · Hangzhou. The shrine and tomb of the Song general Yue Fei, a short solemn visit beside West Lake.

Source: https://chinafootnotes.com/places/yue-fei-temple · Data checked 2026-10-08 · Rendered for 2026-10-09 (Asia/Shanghai). Facts carry their status; "not found yet" means we searched and found no reliable source.

Notices in effect

• 2026-09-01 to 2026-11-30: West Lake autumn peak traffic management: on weekends and public holidays, 08:00–17:00, cars follow odd/even number plates, and taxi or ride-hail drop-offs on Beishan Street must use designated points.

Why go

The Yue Fei Temple (岳王庙) is the tomb and shrine of Yue Fei (1103–1142), the Southern Song general China remembers as a loyal hero put to death on a false charge. It sits on Beishan Road at the foot of Qixia Ridge, opposite Quyuan Garden. The compound has three parts: the main hall with his statue and murals, a tomb garden with four kneeling iron figures, and a small memorial hall. Allow one to two hours.

What to do

• Main hall and the statue. Walk into the Zhonglie Shrine (忠烈祠), the main hall, where a 4.75 m painted statue of Yue Fei sits under the plaque 还我河山 (Return my rivers and mountains). Eight large murals tell his story along the walls.
• The stele corridor. The corridor in the tomb zone holds 128 stone steles, among them Yue Fei’s own handwriting and visitors’ poems across the centuries, including a stone carving of the poem Man Jiang Hong.
• Tomb garden and kneeling figures. Yue Fei and his son Yue Yun lie side by side, with stone figures and animals along the path. Four iron figures kneel before the tomb gate, among them the minister Qin Hui who had him killed.
• Yue Fei Memorial Hall. The small museum in the Qizhong Shrine (启忠祠) area follows his life in four sections with panels, text and models. It is inside the paid compound and needs no second ticket.
• Read the 'Jin zhong bao guo' wall. At the end of the tomb-garden path, a whitewashed screen wall carries four large characters, 尽忠报国 ('serve the country with utmost loyalty'). The common saying is 精忠报国, but this wall uses 尽忠报国, the words the Song History records on Yue Fei's back.

• Don't miss: The memorial hall is part of the same ticket, so go in before leaving.
• Don't miss: The kneeling iron figures are the best-known spot, and spitting on them is no longer allowed.

• Best time: The first hour after the 07:30 opening
• Skip if: You have no interest in Chinese history and only 30 minutes; a quick pass through the main hall and tomb garden still covers the highlights.

Practical details

• Hours: 07:30–17:30 daily
• Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun: 07:30–17:30
• The West Lake management office (2024) and the city-media profile (2025) both give 07:30–17:30 every day. Some older travel pages still show a summer 07:00–18:00 and winter 07:30–17:30 split; no current operator source supports it.
• Hangzhou’s West Lake committee closes all its parks and museums when a typhoon response is raised.
• Admission: ¥25 adult ticket
• Adult: ¥25 (All year)
• Concession: Ages 60–69; full-time students in mainland China ¥12.5 (Valid ID or student card at the ticket window)
• Free: Ages 18 and under; ages 70 and over; serving military, disabled visitors and some others (Valid ID at the ticket window)
• One ticket covers the main hall, the tomb garden and the Yue Fei Memorial Hall; the memorial hall needs no second ticket.
• Qunar adds that the free entry for ages 70 and over is for Chinese citizens; the West Lake office's 2016 reply and Bendibao do not say. Foreign seniors should ask at the window.
• Holiday price: no source gives a separate holiday price, so the standard ¥25 is shown.
• Booking: Online booking offered; walk-up buying also reported
• West Lake Travel (西湖旅游) — WeChat → search 西湖旅游 → menu 预约购票 / 景区门票 → 岳王庙
• Ticket counter at the entrance (岳王庙售票处)
• Passport accepted: unknown — A Singapore blogger paid at the ticket office with Alipay in 2025; no operator page states whether passports are accepted.
• Bendibao says tickets can be booked on the 'West Lake Travel' WeChat account up to three days ahead; Qunar lists the temple as 'advance booking needed'; Blueginger (Mar 2025) bought tickets at the ticket office. No operator page confirms the booking rules.
• Last admission: Last entry time not published
• Time to allow: 1–2 hr
• Getting there: Line 1 + bus 7/27 to Yuefen stop, Beishan Rd
• Show a taxi driver: 杭州市西湖区北山街80号 岳王庙
• No metro station sits at the temple. The West Lake office's 2024 note says to take Line 1 to Longxiangqiao and change to bus 7, 27, 277, the West Lake Outer Loop bus or WE1314 onto Beishan Street. On foot from Longxiangqiao it is about 3 km, so most visitors take the bus.
• The city-media profile names the bus stop Yuefen (岳坟); Qunar and a Trip.com poster call it Yuemiao (岳庙).
• Autumn weekends and holidays (September to November, 08:00–17:00): odd/even number-plate rule for cars, and Beishan Street is a no-stopping road for taxis.
• Foreign visitors: Foreign ticket and payment details not confirmed

Not found yet

• booking.passport.accepted: No operator page or traveller report states whether passports are accepted at the ticket window or on the WeChat account. (searched: West Lake office gov page, Hangzhou Bendibao, English travel sites, Xiaohongshu)
• foreignVisitors: No operator source states passport, foreign card or English support for this temple. (searched: West Lake office gov page, English travel sites, Trip.com Moments, Xiaohongshu)
• lastAdmission: No operator source gives a last-entry time; one poster says 17:15 and an OTA listing says 17:30. (searched: Qunar listing, Hangzhou Bendibao, Trip.com Moments, Xiaohongshu)

Traveler tips

• Buy the ¥25 ticket online or at the counter. Adult entry to the Yue Fei Temple (岳王庙) is ¥25 and one ticket covers the main hall, the tomb garden and the Yue Fei Memorial Hall. Book ahead on the 'West Lake Travel' (西湖旅游) WeChat account, which local guides say sells tickets up to three days ahead, or pay at the ticket counter at the entrance. _Caveat: The ¥25 price and the three-day advance booking come from Hangzhou Bendibao, Hayes_88 Grace, Blueginger and OTA pages; no operator page confirms them. Blueginger (Singapore, Mar 2025) paid ¥25 per adult through Alipay at the ticket office and did not mention a reservation. The West Lake office's 2024 note says the Memorial Hall is inside the paid area. 杭州周末去哪 (26 Aug 2026) lists the temple among the sites that need no reservation, with tickets bought on the spot or online; 向往草原 (27 Jun 2025) writes that adult tickets are sold by a group-buy app while children and seniors must buy at the window; 抱枕抱着一切 (27 Feb 2026, a promotional post) advises booking three days ahead on the 西湖旅游 account._ (3 travelers) source
• Seniors and students: check your eligibility at the window. Half-price tickets (¥12.5) are listed for ages 60 to 69 and for full-time students in mainland China, and entry is listed as free from age 70. A foreign senior or student should ask at the ticket window before assuming a discount, because the eligibility lists name Chinese ID documents. Caveat: The 2016 official reply sets 70+ free and 60–69 half price for West Lake sites. Qunar's current table adds that the 70+ free rule is for 'Chinese domestic citizens'; the other pages do not say whether foreigners qualify, and no operator statement was found. 云杉Spruce (3 Apr 2026), 旅游向导小文 (7 Apr 2025) and Ivan (20 Sep 2025) repeat the same list of discounts and none says whether foreign documents qualify. 穆然 (20 Sep 2023) was refused the student half price on a student card at the window, which asked for a Chinese 学信网 record. (3 travelers) source
• Go in the first hour after 07:30. The gates open at 07:30, and the grounds are nearly empty in the first hour or so. The tomb garden is quiet enough to photograph without crowds early in the day. Caveat: Both posters give early times (07:30 to 09:00 and before 08:00) but no queue lengths or head counts. (2 travelers) source
• Follow the loop: hall, steles, tomb garden, memorial hall. From the courtyard behind the gate, walk into the main hall (忠烈祠) first, then along the stele corridor (碑廊) and across the 'Loyalty Bridge' (精忠桥) into the tomb garden with the kneeling iron figures. Finish at the Yue Fei Memorial Hall (启忠祠 / 岳飞纪念馆), then walk back out. The whole circuit takes 1 to 1.5 hours. Caveat: Orders in the travel posts differ slightly (the Trip.com poster visits a small pavilion with a stone-tree fossil, 精忠柏亭, before the tomb); the layout is three zones – tomb garden, main hall, memorial hall – and no one-way system is posted in the sources. 抱枕抱着一切 (27 Feb 2026) gives a nine-stop order (gate, stone arch, main hall, Jingzhong Bridge, stele corridor, tomb garden, kneeling statues, Qizhong Shrine, cypress pavilion) in 1.5 to 2 hours; 天凉好个秋momo (4 May 2026) found the halls follow a timeline but without clear signs on the order. (2 travelers) source
• Read the eight murals and look at the ceiling. Inside the main hall a 4.75 m painted statue of Yue Fei sits under the 'Return my rivers and mountains' (还我河山) plaque. Eight large murals run along the walls, including 'Mother tattoos the characters' and 'Wrongful imprisonment'. Look up as well: the ceiling carries a painted flock of cranes. Caveat: The city-media profile gives the statue height and the eight mural titles. The count of 373 cranes on the ceiling comes from the Trip.com poster only. source
• Do not spit on or strike the kneeling statues. In front of the tomb four iron figures kneel facing Yue Fei: Qin Hui, his wife Lady Wang, Mo Qixie and Zhang Jun. Visitors used to spit on them. A sign now reads 'Visit courteously, no spitting', so look and photograph only, and do not let children climb the figures. _Caveat: Hayes_88 Grace (Jul 2026) saw an elderly visitor spit on the Qin Hui figure, so the old habit has not stopped; no source describes staff enforcement. The wording of the sign comes from the Qunar page text._ (3 travelers) source
• Treat it as a memorial: flowers, low voices, no flash. Visitors lay yellow or white chrysanthemums at the tomb. Keep voices low in the tomb garden and do not use flash on the statue or the steles inside the hall. _Caveat: The flowers, flash rule and no-food advice are from the 流汁猫兒 post (Sep 2026); Hayes_88 Grace adds that families bowed at the tomb. These are visitor habits, not a published visitor code._ (2 travelers) source
• Rent an audio guide or ask for a live guide. The temple rents audio-guide devices and offers live guides at the site. English availability is not stated, so ask at the counter if you need it. Caveat: The service list is from the city media profile. The 流汁猫兒 post (Sep 2026) says a QR code on site gave a free digital commentary; no language options are named in either source. 向往草原 (27 Jun 2025) rents the audio guide at the service centre left of the entrance, and the commentary starts by itself at the murals and boards; Ivan (20 Sep 2025) says a paid live guide can be hired on the left inside the gate. (3 travelers) source
• No metro at the gate: take bus 7 or 27. Take Metro Line 1 to Longxiangqiao (龙翔桥) and change to bus 7, 27 or 277, or the West Lake Outer Loop bus, towards Beishan Road. City media call the stop Yuefen (岳坟) and some apps call it Yuemiao (岳庙). Allow 15 to 20 minutes on the bus from the Hubin area. Bus 7 runs from Lingyin Temple to the Yue Fei Temple stop without a change; the stop (called 岳坟 or 岳庙) is about a hundred metres from the entrance. From the temple, the Hangzhou Hotel pier for West Lake boats is a few minutes on foot, passing the Su Causeway end and Quyuan Fenghe’s imperial-stele pavilion. Caveat: The 15 to 20 minute bus time is our estimate, not a timetable. Bus lines and stop names overlap but are not identical, so check the bus app on the day. 云杉Spruce (3 Apr 2026) names buses 7, 27 and 51 to the 岳坟 stop; 旅游向导小文 (7 Apr 2025) names 7, 27 and 277; Ivan (20 Sep 2025) names 7, 27, 117 and the inner-ring line to 岳王庙; 航 (18 May 2025) names 7, 27 and 118. Metro line 3 Huanglong Cave exit B is reached by cycling about ten minutes (Ivan, 向往草原), by a ten-minute walk (云杉Spruce) or about 2 km (航). 欲穷千里目 (10 Apr 2026) names the stop 岳坟 and gives the pier walk; 碧云天 (2 Oct 2026) boarded at 14:40 at Lingyin. Bus numbers and stop names differ by source, so check the stop sign. (7 travelers) source
• Autumn weekends and holidays: avoid driving or hailing a car. From September to November, on weekends and public holidays between 08:00 and 17:00, the West Lake area applies odd/even number-plate rules for cars. Beishan Street, which the temple faces, is a no-stopping road: take a bus, or ask a taxi or ride-hailing driver for a designated drop-off point on the road. Caveat: Both pages quote the West Lake management committee’s autumn traffic notice. The notice names Nanshan Road and the Lingyin area for the taxi transfer points, and lists Beishan Street under the no-stopping roads. source
• Typhoon alerts close all West Lake parks at short notice. When Hangzhou raises a typhoon response, the West Lake management committee can shut every park site and museum it runs, which includes the Yue Fei Temple, from the next day. Follow the 'Hangzhou West Lake Scenic Area' (杭州西湖景区发布) WeChat account for the reopening notice. Caveat: A notice dated 27 August 2026 closed the West Lake parks, museums and memorial halls from 28 August, and a notice dated 29 August announced their reopening. The notices cover the committee's park sites and museums without naming each one; the June 2026 West Lake Day article lists the Yue Fei Temple among the 15 paid sites under the same management. source
• Free on 24 June (West Lake Day). West Lake Day falls on 24 June each year. In 2026 the Yue Fei Temple was one of the 15 paid West Lake sites that waived the entry fee for all visitors that day. Caveat: The free-entry list is announced each year, so check the notice for the current year. A 2024 Bendibao listing required booking a free ¥0 ticket online first; the 2026 article does not say whether booking was needed. source
• Inbound visitors: try the Alipay Tourism Code. Hangzhou's inbound-tourism programme lets foreign visitors register with a passport in the international version of Alipay and enter taking part attractions by scanning a code, without showing the passport or queueing at a ticket window. The English news report names Qiandao Lake, the Botanical Garden and the Zoo for ticket discounts and does not name the Yue Fei Temple, so ask at the counter whether the code works here. Caveat: The English report says the programme launched in May 2026 and gives no end date. It does not say which attractions accept the code beyond those it names. source
• Pair it with Quyuan Garden and the Su Causeway. The temple stands on Beishan Road opposite Quyuan Garden (曲院风荷), at the north end of the Su Causeway, and Xiling Bridge is about 500 m east. A temple visit followed by a lakeside walk to Gushan fits a half day. Caveat: The Xiling Bridge distance comes from a German-language travel blog (Nov 2024), and the 'opposite Quyuan' position from the Qunar page; the half-day pairing is our suggestion. (2 travelers) source
• Be at the gate by 17:00. The temple closes at 17:30 and no last-entry time is published. Reach the ticket counter by about 17:00 so you have time to walk the full circuit of hall, steles, tomb garden and memorial hall. Caveat: 流汁猫兒 (Sep 2026) writes that admission stops at 17:15, while a Qunar listing says 17:30. No operator source confirms either. 抱枕抱着一切 (27 Feb 2026) writes that entry stops at 17:30, and 航 (18 May 2025) gives summer hours of 07:30–18:00 and winter hours of 08:00–17:30; neither is confirmed by the operator. (2 travelers) source
• Do not buy the Leifeng Pagoda and Yue Fei Temple combo online. An online combo ticket for Leifeng Pagoda and Yue Fei Temple may not work at the temple gate: staff can require the combo to be used at Leifeng Pagoda first, or a separate ticket bought on the spot. The two sites are far apart on foot, so buy a single ticket at the temple itself. Caveat: MQ (18 Apr 2026) is a single complaint; a commenter says scanning to buy at the gate is easy and has no queue, and another points out that the rule is in the ticket notice. A multi-site package from a reseller may differ. source
• At the Yuewang bus stop, friendly strangers may steer you to Longjing for tea. At the Yue Fei Temple bus stop, friendly strangers may tell you to skip the temple and see the source of Longjing at the end of the line first, with Lingyin, and the temple last. At the terminus one of them may take you into a village, offer tea and press you to buy. Walk on to the temple and do not follow strangers to a tea shop. Caveat: A113 (18 Jun 2026) writes that the traveller bought tea for ¥240 and that nobody was forced to buy; replies call it an old trick in other cities. source

Sources

• 杭州西湖风景名胜区管理委员会（岳庙管理处） (published 2024-10-04)
• 杭州网 (published 2025-08-26)
• 杭州市文化广电旅游局 (published 2023-08-09)
• 杭州政协网（橙柿互动） (published 2023-01-18)
• 杭州网 (published 2026-09-07)
• 杭州日报（杭州政协网转载） (published 2026-09-30)
• 杭州本地宝 (published 2026-09-23)
• 杭州政协网（都市快报） (published 2026-06-24)
• 杭州网 (published 2026-08-27)
• 东方资讯（转自杭州网） (published 2026-08-29)
• Hangzhou News (en.hangzhou.com.cn) (published 2026-05-23)
• 杭州西湖风景名胜区管委会（市园文局） (published 2016-02-22)
• 杭州本地宝
• 杭州本地宝 (published 2026-03-24)
• 去哪儿网
• 流汁猫兒 (Trip.com Moments)
• Hayes_88 Grace (Trip.com Moments) (published 2026-07-31)
• Blueginger (published 2025-03-16)
• Xiefuzi Reise Blog (published 2024-11-08)
• 杭州本地宝
• 浙江在线 (published 2026-06-22)
• 杭州网 (published 2025-10-28)
• 抱枕抱着一切 (published 2026-02-27)
• MQ (published 2026-04-18)
• 欲穷千里目 (published 2026-04-10)
• 碧云天 (published 2026-10-02)
• A113 (published 2026-06-18)
• 杭州周末去哪 (published 2026-08-26)
• 向往草原 (published 2025-06-27)
• 云杉Spruce (published 2026-04-03)
• 旅游向导小文 (published 2025-04-07)
• Ivan (published 2025-09-20)
• 航 (published 2025-05-18)
• 天凉好个秋momo (published 2026-05-04)

More places

• Pair with: West Lake, Zhejiang Provincial Museum
• More in Around West Lake: Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Hefang Street