Songzhu Monastery, Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing, China

Songzhu Monastery is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing with multiple halls containing Buddha statues, traditional decorations, and spaces for meditation. The complex features several buildings arranged around courtyards that serve as venues for religious ceremonies and daily practice.

Kangxi ordered the temple built in 1711 and named it Songzhu in 1712 as a residence for the Second Changkya Qutuqtu, head of Gelugpa affairs in southern Mongolia. In 1724 the Third Changkya was enthroned here. The 1733 woodblocks of the Qianlong Buddhist canon, the Longzang, were stored and first printed at Songzhu. In 1900 Eight-Nation Alliance troops looted thousands of statues and objects.

The temple's name, Songzhu, was requested in 1712, and from the Second Changkya Qutuqtu onward it served as the Beijing residence of the Changkya Qutuqtu line. The 1935 Yonghegong guide notes that the temple and Zhizhu Temple were under the Changkya Qutuqtu's jurisdiction. In the Republican era, the Buddhist Association of Same Vow was founded here with the Seventh Changkya as president, and the temple later housed the Mongolian Banner Propaganda Office.

The monastery no longer functions as a temple: religious activity ceased in the 1950s, and the surviving central-axis halls (main hall, Baozuo Hall, sutra library) stand among later buildings and a stalled high-rise. The gate, Drum and Bell Towers and Tianwang Hall were demolished by the Dongfeng TV factory. Enter from Songzhu Beixiang; the site is split across several street numbers.

The monastery's name is tied to the imperially sponsored woodblocks of the Longzang, the only official Qing edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon. Carving began in 1733 by Yongzheng's order and took nearly six years; the blocks were first stored and printed at Songzhu Monastery, so the edition is also called the Songzhu Monastery edition.