Zhaji Temple 扎基寺

About Zhaji Temple

Zhaji Temple (扎基寺) is a small Gelug (格鲁派) Tibetan Buddhist temple on Zhaji East Road (扎基东路) in Chengguan District (城关区), Lhasa (拉萨). It belongs to Sera Monastery (色拉寺) and is known above all for its protector goddess, Zhaji Lhamo (扎基拉姆), to whom people come to pray for wealth.

The ground here was a Qing garrison area: in 1733 the 500 Qing troops stationed in Lhasa moved to the Zhaji plain and rebuilt the barracks there. According to a 2024 study by Mima Tsering (米玛次仁) of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, published in the journal China Tibetology (中国藏学), the temple began as Wanshou Temple (万寿寺). It was founded with the approval of the imperial residents Jifu (积福) and Funai (辅鼐), paid for by the Tibetan government and staffed by 25 monks from Sera's Je college. The study dates the founding to 1761. Old monks led a rebuilding in the 1980s, and a large-scale restoration followed in 2004. Monks still come from Sera on rotation.

The main hall holds Buddha and lineage-master images in the usual Gelug arrangement; what draws the crowds stands just inside the door. On the left is Zhaji Lhamo, black-faced and round-eyed, with her tongue out and a pair of chicken feet: in the Lhasa legend, jealous local spirits poisoned her and cut off her feet. She is described as a worldly manifestation of Palden Lhamo (吉祥天母), the protector of Lhasa, who came from inland China with a Sera master. Facing her is the local earth god. The 2024 study identifies this figure as Trinring Gyalpo (真仁杰布) and argues that he is Guan Yu (关云长), the god of the garrison's old Guandi temple, absorbed into the Tibetan pantheon.

Worship follows its own routine. Xinhua, reporting from the temple in August 2012, described worshippers buying juniper branches (桑枝), baijiu and khata scarves at the gate, burning the juniper in a censer in the south-east corner of the compound, and queuing before the Zhaji Lhamo shrine while a monk poured their liquor into a vat. Lhasa people consider Wednesday the best day to ask her for wealth. Upstairs, worshippers can draw divination slips before Palden Lhamo and have a monk interpret them.

What to look for

• The Zhaji Lhamo (扎基拉姆) image left of the main-hall door, black-faced with chicken feet, where worshippers offer baijiu
• The earth-god image facing her, identified in a 2024 study as Trinring Gyalpo (真仁杰布), a Tibetanised Guan Yu
• The juniper censer (煨桑炉) in the south-east corner of the compound
• The wall inscription on the main-hall gatehouse recording the building of the temple
• Divination slips drawn before Palden Lhamo (吉祥天母) on the upper floor

Location & getting there

Getting to Zhaji Temple

• Search for 扎基寺 with 拉萨市 and 城关区.