City guide · Zhejiang
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Most people who come here do not want to convert and do not want to become Buddhas. They are simply parking a wish in a form. And that seems fine to me — everyone is living an ordinary life, and a little bit of something lofty in the heart probably means one less mean act in the world. — A traveller's note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
The 'arhat dish' is ¥10: rice and a big cauldron of stew — green beans, cabbage, mushroom, tofu and noodles all cooked together, and honestly rather good and clean-tasting. If you want a clear mind you have to eat like this for a while, and wash out your greasy insides first. — A traveller's note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
Of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains, this is the only one you have to take a boat to. Mount Putuo is a small island in the Zhoushan archipelago off the Zhejiang coast, and it has been the seat of Guanyin — the bodhisattva of compassion — since the Tang. People arrive asking for a child, for money, for safety. Monks arrive and bow their way up the mountain one step at a time. Plenty of visitors arrive with no belief at all and leave quieter than they came.
The island's mood is as much sea as religion. Surf booms into a sea cave; there is gold sand at Baibu and Qianbu; temple roofs sit among old camphor and juniper; carved characters appear on cliff faces. Its own boast is that every house, hill, rock and plant here carries the colour of a Buddhist country — which sounds like marketing until you stand at the top of Foding and look out over water in every direction.
Two practical things shape the visit. The first is that the island ticket is only the beginning: the big temples each take their own small incense fee on top, and every one of them drops that fee at 17:30. The second is that there are no taxis. A shuttle network links the sights, but the distances are short and the coast is the best part of the island, so the guide's own advice is to walk anything that would cost ¥2–4.
Getting here is the only real friction. There is no road; you cross by boat from Zhoushan, either from Shenjiamen's Banshengdong pier or, more quickly, from Zhujiajian's Wugongzhi pier — and because queues build at peak times, the relaxed version is to sleep on the mainland side and cross on an early boat.
Mount Putuo
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Putuo is the seat of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion — 'a thousand places ask, a thousand places answer; on the bitter sea she is always the boat that ferries people across'. The island has been her home since the Tang, when the Japanese monk Egaku was storm-bound here with a statue she apparently did not want to leave.
Puji, Fayu and Huiji are the island's three great monasteries, and each carries a ¥5 incense ticket. Every one of them drops that charge after 17:30. That is the single best-value hour on the island: the crowds have gone, the halls are lit, and you walk in for nothing.
All three temples run dining halls. Ten yuan buys rice and a cauldron of stewed vegetables, and it is filling and good. Buy your ticket at the door around 10:30 because they run out. It is not a gimmick; it is the most honest meal on the island and the reason some people come.
Chaoyin Cave is half-submerged, its mouth facing the open sea, pounded day and night so the surf in it sounds like thunder; the cave floor opens to the sea and two gaps in the roof are called the skylights, through which spray shoots in a gale. Fanting Cave, at the other end of the island, is the second of the island's two 'tide-sound' caves and the best place on it to sit and listen.
Putuo is full of strange rocks, mostly gathered in the West Heaven area — more than twenty named spots including Pantu Rock and the Two Turtles Listening to the Dharma. Every stone comes with a legend, and the island is more fun once you start hearing them.
After a day on the temple paths, go down to Baibu or Qianbu sand, take your shoes off and let the surf run over your feet. The guide's own description is that everything stops mattering. Baibu's sand is soft and the sea there is unusually gentle; there is a small pavilion on the spit called the Teacher Stone Pavilion for watching sunrise.
Suggested routes
Arrive on the 09:00 boat, cover the three temples and the Guanyin statue, leave by late afternoon.
Land around 09:00 and go straight to the Nanhai Guanyin standing image, the island's landmark, then walk on to Chaoyin Cave to hear the surf and to the Won't-Go Guanyin Temple, where the whole island begins. Take it slowly; the point is a settled mind, not a completed list.
Stops: Nanhai GuanyinChaoyin CaveWon't-Go Guanyin Temple
Eat in the Puji dining hall — buy the ticket at the door at about 10:30 before they sell out. Then go through Puji: the Sea-Print Pool, the gate, the imperial stele hall, the bell and drum towers, the Great Complete Penetration Hall and the Dharma Hall. Finish the afternoon at Fayu Temple.
Stops: Puji dining hallPuji TempleFayu Temple
If the cable-car queue looks under an hour, ride up to Foding for Huiji Temple and the view over the coast, then take a boat off the island. If the queue is longer, walk up — it is about half an hour — or skip it and spend the time on the sand instead.
Stops: Foding summitHuiji Temple
West Heaven and the south on day one, Luojia and the east on day two. The standard trip.
Start in the West Heaven area and read the rocks: the Heart Character Stone, the huge 'heart' carved into the boulder where Guanyin is said to have preached the Heart Sutra; Pantu Rock, the pair of boulders that look about to fall and have not; and the Two Turtles Listening to the Dharma. Walk into Puji for the architecture, then lunch in its dining hall.
Spend the afternoon on Puji in detail — Sea-Print Pool, the gate, the imperial stele hall, the bell and drum towers, the Great Complete Penetration Hall and the Dharma Hall — and finish at Duobao Pagoda, the island's only building to survive in its original form. Sleep near Zizhulin and eat seafood by the water.
Stops: Heart Character StonePantu RockPuji TempleDuobao Pagoda
Take the 08:00 boat from Short Aunt's Landing to Luojia Mountain — about 25 minutes, an hour and a half on the island, and the saying is that you have not finished Putuo until you have been. Come back, visit the Won't-Go Guanyin Temple, then Chaoyin Cave and Zizhulin, and finish at the Nanhai Guanyin for the photograph.
Stops: Luojia MountainWon't-Go Guanyin TempleChaoyin CaveNanhai Guanyin
West Heaven, then the south and Luojia, then beaches, Fanting Cave and Foding.
Take the whole first day over the West Heaven rocks and Puji. Do not hurry it; the point of three days is that nothing has to be rushed.
Stops: West HeavenPuji Temple
The 08:00 boat to Luojia, back for the Won't-Go Guanyin Temple and Chaoyin Cave, then Zizhulin and the Guanyin statue. Stay in a sea-view room near Zizhulin or Fayu if the weather is clear.
Stops: Luojia MountainZizhulinNanhai Guanyin
Walk the sand in the morning, hear the monks chanting at Fayu, eat in its dining hall, take the shuttle to Fanting Cave for the surf, then ride or walk up Foding and come back down along the coast — the descent has the best sea views on the island and street lights all the way.
Stops: Baibu sandFayu TempleFanting CaveFoding
Sights
The image of the island
The island's landmark and the first thing you see from the water as the boat comes in across the Lotus Sea: a bronze Guanyin whose body alone is 18 metres, left hand holding the wheel of the dharma and right hand raised in the gesture of fearlessness. The pedestal is three tiers — a merit hall below, 500 small Guanyin figures above, and boxwood carvings of her legends and coloured-jade reliefs of Putuo scenery in the lower hall. On the path up you will pass monks prostrating themselves all the way.
Tip It is the one sight that reads best from the water. If your boat approaches from the south, be on deck.
The front temple
Also called the Front Temple, the largest monastery on the island and the principal shrine of Guanyin, set south of Baihua Hill below Lingjiu Peak and built in the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns, which is why it carries the air of an imperial temple. Its Great Complete Penetration Hall is nicknamed the 'living hall' and enshrines an 8.8-metre Vairochana Guanyin, surrounded by hundreds of halls, chambers and towers. Together with Fayu and Huiji it is one of Putuo's three great monasteries.
Tip Do not photograph the interiors. Photograph the courtyards and the approach instead — the rule is enforced and it is not worth being told off for.
The back temple
Also called the Back Temple, one of the three great monasteries, founded as a thatched hermit's retreat and named from the phrase about the dharma sea and the sound of the tide. The whole complex is grand and high-set, with the surf on Qianbu sand audible from it. Its Nine-Dragon Hall is the highest-grade Buddhist hall building in the country and holds one of Putuo's three treasures, the Nine-Dragon Caisson, carved with real brilliance into the ceiling. It has a dining hall at midday.
Tip Stand in the Nine-Dragon Hall and look up. It is the single finest ceiling on the island and most people walk straight past it.
The summit temple
Also called Foding Mountain Temple. It began as a stone pavilion with a Buddha in it; the monk Huiyuan founded the Huiji Hermitage in the Ming, and in the 58th year of Qianlong the halls of Complete Penetration, Jade Spring and Great Compassion were built and the hermitage became a monastery. Its 145 halls and pavilions hide in green forest, and the Great Hero Hall's coloured glazed roof throws a 'Buddha-light' effect in sunshine. The Guanyin hall walls are set with stone carvings by famous painters of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing.
Tip Walk down rather than riding. The coastal descent is the best sea view on the island, there are street lights and restaurants along it, and it is safe — just be at the shuttle car park before 17:30.
Where the island started
Zizhulin's rock is purplish-red, cut through with patterns that look like cypress leaves and bamboo, and purple bamboo was planted here to match. In 916 the Japanese monk Egaku, carrying a Guanyin image home from Wutai, was stopped by wind in the Lotus Sea off this shore; he took it as a sign that she did not want to go, went ashore and built the Won't-Go Guanyin Temple — the first shrine on Putuo and, as its name insists, the reason the island exists. In front of it is Chaoyin Cave, mouth to the sea, pounded until the surf in it sounds like thunder; the cave floor opens to the water and two roof gaps are called the skylights.
Tip Come here on a windy day if you get one — the spray firing up through the skylights is the sight, and it does not happen in calm weather.
Free, and the most fun
Putuo is full of strange rocks and most of them are in the West Heaven area — more than twenty named spots, each with a story. Pantu Rock is a pair of boulders on a platform on Meiling summit that look ready to fall and have not moved, said to be the spot where Guanyin preached; women pilgrims traditionally rub metal coins on it and take them home for their children. The Two Turtles Listening to the Dharma are two turtle-shaped rocks, one crouched on the cliff looking back, one climbing with its neck stretched — sent by the Dragon King to hear the teaching, so caught up that they forgot to go home and were turned to stone. And the Heart Character Stone, the largest carved character on the island: the dot at its centre seats eight or nine people and the whole character nearly a hundred.
Tip Do this at the end of the day. The rocks are free, the light is better, and the tour groups have gone back to the pier.
The beaches
Baibu sand is soft and the sea there is unusually gentle because the beach is narrow and sheltered; a small spit runs into the water with a pavilion on it, the Teacher Stone Pavilion, for watching sunrise, hearing the tide and taking the sea wind. There is an old verse: 'the sand before the Prince's pagoda, scattered in the wind like rosy cloud — to this day the curled stones are here, and not one bears a flaw.' Qianbu sand, by Fayu, is the long one.
Tip Buy towels, flip-flops and a swimsuit before you land. Everything on the island costs more, and the guide is explicit about it.
You have not finished without it
Seen from Putuo, Luojia lies on the water like a reclining Buddha — wooded, full of small hermitages, and said to be where Guanyin first practised. The local saying is that if you have not been to Luojia you have not completed Putuo. Boats generally run three times a day at 07:00, 08:00 and 13:00, the crossing takes about 25 minutes and you get an hour and a half ashore. Go early and come back early; there is free drinking water and free incense on the path up.
Tip Take the 07:00 or 08:00 rather than the 13:00, and do not linger — the island gets crowded and the return boats fill.
Faith
Etiquette
The sequence is short and worth knowing. Prepare: wash your hands, straighten your clothes and settle your mind. Light the candle. Then take the incense — grip the sticks between your middle and index fingers with the thumb at the base, bring them to your chest, raise them level with your brow, lower them, place them in the burner, press your palms together and bow once where you stand. In the hall, bow on the cushions at the sides, men left and women right as the image faces you; the sequence is stand with palms together, contemplate and make your wish, then prostrate.
Tip Incense is sold at every sight: ¥15 for a small bucket and ¥36 for a large one, enough for two people. You do not need to bring your own.
¥10, and buy early
All three great temples run dining halls for pilgrims, and the island's own note is that every one of them now serves only the midday meal, selling tickets from about 10:30, with limited numbers — queue on time. Ten yuan gets you rice and a big cauldron of stewed vegetables: cabbage and noodle soup, tofu, potato, or beans, mushroom and tofu with a side of small tofu and potato. Rice can be refilled. You eat at long tables with strangers, which is half the experience.
Tip Eat everything on the plate. It is the one rule the island is genuinely serious about, and the hall is air-conditioned in summer.
Or not, depending on your nerves
The 19th day of the second, sixth and ninth lunar months are Guanyin's birth, enlightenment and renunciation, and Putuo at those moments is something else entirely: from the middle gate of Puji all the way to Foding the crowds surge, and up the thousand stone steps of the Cloud-Scented Path from Fayu's Nine-Dragon Hall pilgrims bow at every step. The whole mountain is thick with people and smoke. Every temple also stops its free-entry arrangement for Zhoushan residents with ID during these periods.
Tip If you want to see the spectacle, go deliberately and book weeks ahead. If you want the island, pick an ordinary Tuesday instead.
The practice
People release captive animals at the temple ponds to accumulate merit, and the island encourages care for animals whether or not you are Buddhist. The caution attached to it is specific: think about the season and the environment. Do not release turtles into a lotus pool in winter — in cold weather, in a pool with no sloping bank to rest on, they die.
Tip If you want to take part, ask at the temple what is appropriate that week rather than buying from a stall outside.
If your dates line up
The Putuo Nanhai Guanyin Culture Festival runs every November, one of Zhoushan's three big tourism events — large dharma assemblies, Buddhist concerts, pilgrimages, a lotus-lantern evening, seminars and an exhibition of Buddhist cultural products, and open to pilgrims and tourists alike. In March, 'Spring on Putuo', first held in 1990, is a more popular affair: music, dance, opera, calligraphy, photography, lantern riddles, a lucky draw, a Buddhist-country tea ceremony and volunteer activities.
Tip The November festival is the more impressive of the two and the less crowded with domestic tour groups.
Food
The dish the island is known for: ¥10 for rice and a cauldron of stew — green beans, cabbage, mushroom, tofu and noodles cooked together, clean-tasting and filling. Rice is refillable. Eat it all; waste is the one thing the halls mind.
The famous one at Puji: cabbage, wood-ear fungus, a little dried tofu, or beans, mushroom and tofu, served with a side of small tofu and potato. Plain, unpretentious, and the guide's verdict is that you have to eat like this for a while if you actually want to clear your head.
Putuo's live seafood is genuinely abundant — yellow croaker, striped prawns, lobster, sea crab, clams, mussels and shellfish. The restaurants cluster at the seafood garden and around the front temple, the back temple and the South Heaven Gate. It is good, and it is dearer than on the Zhoushan mainland.
The island's snack: seaweed, black sesame, peanut and red-bean paste in a low-sugar, entirely vegan pastry, golden outside, crisp then chewy within, with a natural aroma. It reads like a Suzhou mooncake but is much less sweet, and the shops along the scenic streets all stock it.
Putuo produces famous dried seafood, the yellow croaker and cuttlefish especially. The dried fish is sweet-savoury in the classic Jiangzhe way, mostly sold in small vacuum packs — squid, for instance, ready to eat and easy to carry. Buy some to take home.
Also called Putuo cloud-and-mist tea, grown on Foding, the island's summit, where it is warm in winter and cool in summer, humid year-round, in rich soil among forest, with cloud lying on it before sunrise. Tea picked before Grain Rain and brewed with Putuo spring water is held to have medicinal value. Buy it at a large supermarket in Zhoushan, where the price is marked and the quality is guaranteed.
For orientation: a cola ¥5–10, bottled water ¥5–10, local beer ¥10, a meal ¥30–100. Seafood is the expensive end. The temple halls are the cheap end, and the cheapest option available anywhere.
Where to eat
The ¥10 experience
You are not eating for the flavour; you are eating for the experience — a table of strangers, other people's conversation, and a full stomach, with a faintly collective air about it. The food is plain vegetarian: cabbage and noodle soup, tofu, potato, or dried tofu and bean curd, whatever is being cooked that day. There is air conditioning in summer, which is more than you would expect.
The same, twice more
All three of the island's great temples run dining halls for pilgrims and all three sell tickets from around 10:30 at the door. Huiji's, up on Foding, is the one to aim for if you are walking down from the summit; Fayu's is the easiest to combine with the Nine-Dragon Hall and Qianbu sand.
Where the fish is
The island's seafood restaurants concentrate in three places: the seafood garden, and the areas around the front temple, the back temple and the South Heaven Gate. Yellow croaker, striped prawns, lobster, sea crab, clams and mussels, cooked plainly. Prices run high; Zhoushan mainland is noticeably cheaper for the same fish.
The mainland alternative
The guide is blunt about this: seafood on Putuo is expensive and the Zhoushan mainland, a short boat away, is cheaper for the same catch. If you are staying two or three days and seafood matters to you, eat one island meal and one mainland meal.
Where to stay
Read this first
Most of the island's beds cluster around Zizhulin and Fayu Temple. Rates move with demand, not with the calendar: peak season and weekends are high, Sunday and Thursday are the cheapest nights, and on the special dates — May Day, National Day, New Year, Spring Festival and the three lunar incense days — farmhouse rooms go to ¥500–1,000 and beyond. Book early for anything else.
Quiet, near the Guanyin
By the Nanhai Guanyin and Putuo pier, a six-to-ten minute walk to the statue, with the bus to every sight at the door. An old-style lintel over the gate, a courtyard planted with flowers, and genuinely quiet — the Zen is not decorative. Rooms have air conditioning, television, a bathroom and free broadband, hot water round the clock, and the owner is happy to answer any question about the island.
In Zizhulin
In the old Zizhulin temple area, at the foot of the great Guanyin and next to the Zizhulin bus stop. Rooms are clean — twins, triples and family rooms, with television, air conditioning, broadband and a private bathroom, hot water 24 hours. The kitchen does good-value seafood set menus for couples and families, and the owners will buy your boat and bus tickets for you and hold your luggage after check-out.
On the bay
On the gold sand at Longwan Bay, below the Guanyin, backed by hill and facing sea. Suites and standard rooms, a business centre, meeting rooms, a shopping arcade, restaurants and a dance hall; rooms are clean and comfortable and the staff are warm. The hotel restaurant will cook your seafood for a ¥10 processing fee — and the guide notes that for value you may prefer to eat on the Zhoushan mainland.
One minute from Puji
In the centre of Putuo, one minute's walk to Puji Temple, three to Baibu sand, with the West Heaven area on its right. Every kind of superior room, a restaurant with nearly twenty private dining rooms in different styles plus a seafood hall, and business, shopping, beauty, fitness, conference and guide services on site.
The splurge
A boutique hotel next to Fayu Temple, Foding and Qianbu sand, with a Chinese restaurant serving seafood, vegetarian and banquet dishes, and a coffee lounge where you can hear the Lotus Sea tide and the temple bells. Its meditation rooms are deep and genuinely old in feeling, there is an open-air barbecue among old camphor and sea wind, and the rooms have free high-speed broadband; some look straight out over Putuo and Luojia. Expensive.
Shopping
The island's own snack and the easiest gift: seaweed, black sesame, peanut and red-bean paste in a low-sugar vegan pastry, golden and crisp outside, chewy within, with a strong natural aroma. Closer to a Suzhou mooncake than to anything sweet, and much less cloying. Every shop along the scenic streets has it.
Also called Putuo cloud-and-mist tea, grown on Foding summit where the cloud sits on the slopes until sunrise. The tea picked before Grain Rain, brewed with the island's spring water, is held to be medicinal. Buy it at a large Zhoushan supermarket rather than from a temple stall — marked prices and guaranteed quality.
Putuo is one of China's famous 'four sea fish' grounds, the yellow croaker and cuttlefish above all. Dried, the fish is sweet-savoury in the Jiangzhe style, and most of it comes in small vacuum packs — squid, for example — ready to eat and easy to pack. Midsummer, when the catch is in, is the time to buy.
Also called the Guanyin narcissus, and Zhoushan's city flower. In late winter and early spring, when everything else has finished, the sheltered slopes carry patches of it and the scent carries. Locals bring it out to greet guests at Spring Festival as a sign of good fortune. If you are here at the turn of the year, take one away with you.
A Zhejiang Zhoushan old name founded in the Republican period, known across Jiangnan for its vegetarian cooking, with branches around the city and one on Xianghua Street — small shopfront, carefully arranged. It has the most authentic Guanyin cakes, in Buddha-tea, red-bean and pepper-salt versions.
Incense is sold at every sight at ¥15 for a small bucket and ¥36 for a large one, enough for two. Buy it on the island rather than bringing it, and know that beyond incense you may want oil as a sign of respect — and the guide is careful to point out that it is not the cooking kind.
Xianghua Street is the island's shopping street, and Guansutang sits at No. 30. For tea and dried fish the advice is to use the big Zhoushan supermarkets rather than the temple-side stalls — marked prices, and quality you can rely on.
Getting around
Zhoushan airport — also called Putuo Mountain airport — sits on Zhujiajian island, the 'home of sand sculpture', 1.2 km from the fishing port of Shenjiamen and 2.5 km north of Putuo. It has flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Jinjiang, Dalian, Xiamen, Chengdu and Wenzhou. A shuttle runs to Wugongzhi pier after every arrival, and taxis wait at the terminal exit.
There is no road and Putuo has only one pier. The fastest crossing is from Zhujiajian's Wugongzhi pier, about five minutes; the other main route is Shenjiamen's Banshengdong pier, about ten. From Shanghai, Wusong pier runs a night boat at 20:00, calling at Daishan and arriving at 07:30, with an extra Friday sailing at 19:00 arriving at 07:00; fares run ¥109–499.
There are no taxis on the island. Three tourist shuttle lines run 06:00–17:00 at ¥2–10 a ride, with some seasonal variation. Because the fares are steep for short hops, the guide's advice is to walk anything in the ¥2–4 range and enjoy the coast instead. Tell the dispatcher where you are going and they will put you on the right bus.
Foding is the island's highest point; you can ride or walk, and the cable car runs 07:00–16:30 at ¥35 one way and ¥50 return, half price for over-70s with ID. In peak season the queue can pass an hour, in which case walk — about half an hour from Fayu. Given time and weather, walk down along the coast instead, which has the best sea views on the island, street lights and restaurants along it, as long as you reach the shuttle car park before 17:30.
You cannot drive onto Putuo. Drive to Shenjiamen and change to a boat, or cross the sea bridge to Zhujiajian — the bridge toll is ¥30 — and take the boat from there. In peak season the roads around the ferry terminals jam solid, so carry food and water and expect to queue.
Tips
Every incense ticket is dropped at 17:30. That is when the day-trippers have gone, the halls are lit, and the island becomes the quiet place you came for. It is the best-value hour on Putuo.
The temple dining halls serve midday only now, tickets go on sale at the door from about 10:30 and the numbers are limited. Turn up at noon and you will be told they are gone.
You walk a great deal on Putuo. The signage is poor and the shuttle only reaches so far, so comfortable shoes are not optional. This is the one piece of kit the guide insists on.
Island prices run high — water ¥5–10, cola ¥5–10, beer ¥10. Anything you will need on the beach is cheaper bought on the mainland the day before.
If you want a day on Zhujiajian in the middle of your Putuo visit, ask the staff to endorse your ticket as you exit and you will not have to buy another on the way back in.
Coins are useful throughout. On Monkey Island, throw the food on the ground rather than offering it from your hand — the monkeys will bite.
Practical
Putuo rewards the hours the day-trippers cannot reach. Do the temples in daylight if you want the architecture, then go back after 17:30 when the incense fee is dropped and the island is yours.
| Island entry | Feb–Nov ¥160; Dec and Jan ¥140; lunar new year days 1–5, 1–3 May and 1–5 Oct ¥200. Students half price; 70 and over free |
|---|---|
| Not included | Temple incense tickets and Luojia Mountain. Puji ¥5, Fayu ¥5, Huiji ¥5, Zizhulin ¥5, Nanhai Guanyin ¥6 — all free after 17:30 |
| Luojia Mountain | ¥67 including the return boat; departures 07:00, 08:00 and 13:00, about 25 minutes each way, about 1.5 hours ashore |
| Cable car | ¥35 one way, ¥50 return, 07:00–16:30; half price for over-70s with ID. Walking up from Fayu takes about 30 minutes |
| Shuttle buses | 06:00–17:00, ¥2–10, three lines. Walk the ¥2–4 hops |
| Main boats | Wugongzhi–Putuo fast boat 06:10–21:50 every 15 min, about 5 min, ¥22 ferry / ¥24 fast boat; Banshengdong–Putuo ferry four a day 07:20–16:10 ¥22, fast boat every 20 min 06:00–18:00 ¥28 |
| Climate | Subtropical maritime; annual mean 16.1°C, August mean maximum 27°C, January mean minimum 5.5°C; 900–1,300 mm of rain, concentrated in the spring and plum rains of March–June and typhoon season in August and September. Fog on 15–55 days a year, mostly March–June |
| Useful numbers | Tourist information 0580-6093089; pier enquiries 0580-6091121; complaints 0580-6091538; ambulance 0580-6092388; consumer association 0580-6091001; price bureau 0580-6091418 |
| Hospitals | Putuo Puji Hospital, 95 Meicen Road, 0580-6092388; Zhoushan Putuo People's Hospital, 90 Gongxia Road, Shenjiamen, 0580-3012328; Putuo District Hospital of TCM, 2 Bingang Road, 0580-3021555 |
Background
The story that made the island is short. In the Tang, in the fourth year of the Xiantong era, the Japanese monk Egaku obtained a Guanyin image at Wutai Mountain and set sail for home. Crossing the Lotus Sea off Putuo he ran into wind and waves, the ship struck the Silla Reef and drifted to the shore near Chaoyin Cave. He left the image beside the cave and called it the Guanyin Who Would Not Go. In 916, the second year of the Later Liang Zhenming era, the Won't-Go Guanyin Temple was built on the spot, and that is the beginning of Putuo as a Guanyin seat.
Legend had already been here: An Qisheng, the Qin alchemist, is said to have sold medicine on the shore of the East Sea and crossed to Putuo seven times, and the Immortal's Well survives as his trace. Taoist adepts trained on the island more than two thousand years ago — An Qisheng of Qin, Mei Zizhen of Han, Ge Yachuan of Jin — and the island was also a staging point on the maritime Silk Road, the route by which Tang China dealt with Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. The Goryeo landing stage and the Silla Reef are still there, along with the stories of the Korean hero Jang Bogo.
Putuo has been through a thousand years of change. The Song and Yuan were the period when Buddhism here flourished; the three great monasteries — Puji, Fayu and Huiji — still carry busy incense today, and the island's religious culture remains Buddhist through and through. Scholar-officials and men of letters climbed it from the Song onward — Lu You among them — and left poems, songs and inscriptions, which is why the island's stock of steles and carved rock is unusually rich.
The island also collected imperial attention across five dynasties, and in the modern era successive national leaders have visited it. That combination — a sea route, a foreign monk, a reluctant statue, and repeated imperial sponsorship — is what turned a small rocky island into one of the four sacred mountains.
What makes Putuo different from the other three sacred mountains is that it is on the water, and the water is not scenery but structure. Its climate is maritime subtropical: four clear seasons, no extreme heat or cold, humid, monsoon-driven, about 16.1°C across the year, with rain concentrated in the spring and plum seasons and again in typhoon months, and fog on thirty-odd days a year, mostly from March to June. Mirages have been reported here more than once.
That weather is why the island feels the way it does — surf in the caves, cloud on Foding, mist off the Lotus Sea, salt in the air. It is also why the whole place is walkable and why the guides keep telling you to walk: the sea is on both sides of almost every path. Come expecting a monastery and you will find an island that happens to have three very good ones.
The questions visitors ask us most about Mount Putuo, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Island entry is ¥160 from February to November, ¥140 in December and January, and ¥200 over the first five days of the lunar new year, 1–3 May and 1–5 October; students pay half and over-70s go free. On top of that: ¥5 incense at Puji, ¥5 at Fayu, ¥5 at Huiji and ¥6 at the Nanhai Guanyin statue, and ¥67 for Luojia Mountain including the boat. The ¥35 cable car is the last big item.
No. The island ticket explicitly excludes the temple incense tickets and Luojia Mountain. Each of the three great monasteries charges ¥5 and the Nanhai Guanyin statue ¥6. The good news is that all of them are dropped after 17:30, so an evening temple visit is free.
By boat, and there is no road alternative. The fastest route is from Zhujiajian's Wugongzhi pier — a fast boat takes about 5 minutes and runs 06:10–21:50 every 15 minutes, with a ferry at ¥22 and a fast boat at ¥24. From Shenjiamen's Banshengdong pier, ferries run four times a day 07:20–16:10 at ¥22 and fast boats every 20 minutes 06:00–18:00 at ¥28. Zhoushan airport sits on Zhujiajian, with a shuttle to the pier after every flight.
There are no taxis on the island. Three tourist shuttle lines run 06:00–17:00 at ¥2–10 a ride, covering the temples, the beaches, Zizhulin and the pier. For rides in the ¥2–4 range, walk instead — the coastal path is the best part of the island. The cable car up Foding is ¥35 one way and ¥50 return, 07:00–16:30; walking up takes about half an hour.
Eat once in a temple dining hall: ¥10 buys rice and a cauldron of stewed vegetables — beans, cabbage, mushroom, tofu, noodles — and it is filling and genuinely pleasant. Buy the meal ticket at the dining-hall door around 10:30, because they sell out. Then eat seafood: yellow croaker, striped prawns, lobster, sea crab and clams, at the seafood gardens near the temples. It is pricier than on the mainland — Zhoushan island is cheaper.
April to October is comfortable. But avoid the three great incense days — the 19th of the second, sixth and ninth lunar months, Guanyin's birth, enlightenment and renunciation — plus Spring Festival, May Day and National Day, and the first day of every lunar month. On those days boats queue, rooms triple and the island is packed. An ordinary weekday in early summer or autumn gives you the place almost to yourself.
Yes. Treat it as an island with unusually good temples rather than a pilgrimage you have to qualify for. The sand at Baibu and Qianbu, the sea cliffs at Chaoyin and Fanting caves, the view from Foding, and a ¥10 lunch in a dining hall are reasons enough. Plenty of visitors arrive with no faith and simply find it quieter than anywhere else on this coast.
Wash your hands first, straighten your clothes and settle your mind. Light the candle, then hold the incense with the middle and index fingers, thumb at the base — bring it to your chest, raise it to your brow, lower it, place it in the burner, then press your palms together and bow. Enter a hall at the side, not down the centre, and never walk in front of someone who is bowing. Photography is forbidden inside the halls.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
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Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
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Gannan
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Kangding
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Lhasa
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Nyingchi
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Namtso
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Chongqing
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Qiandongnan
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Libo
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Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
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China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
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A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
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Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
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Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
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Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
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A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
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Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
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A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
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Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
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A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
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A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
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Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
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Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
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China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
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A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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