A Chinese temple is a worship place of the Chinese folk religion/Shenism, where people revere ethnic Chinese gods and ancestors. They can be distinguished into:

• miào (庙) or diàn (殿), simply meaning "temple" and mostly enshrining nature gods or national gods;
• cí (祠), cítáng (祠堂), zōngcí (宗祠) or zǔmiào (祖庙), referring to ancestral temples, mostly enshrining the ancestral gods of a family or clan.