Abstract: With the development of modern communication society, the media has become an important force to participate in the construction of the destination image. This research attempts to identify the differences of image representation of Shaolin Temple between Chinese and American newspapers. Representative newspapers were chosen as the sample and the content about Shaolin Temple on those newspapers were collected. The Grounded theory and Chi-square analysis was used to analyze the characteristics of the image of the Shaolin Temple. Finally, we got four main categories: historical culture, modern development, main characters and overall cognition. The results suggested that American newspapers focus on the history and culture, internationalization and commercialization, highlight the main character images that are inconsistent with social norms and try to shape a complicated and contradictory image of Shaolin Temple. Chinese newspapers focus on the modern development of Shaolin Temple, highlight the long history, rich and diverse culture. In addition to focusing on internationalization and commercialization, Chinese newspapers are also concerned about the tourism development of Shaolin Temple. There are both praise and criticism of the main characters in Chinese newspapers. As a whole, Chinese newspapers try to shape a Shaolin Temple image with a long history, rich culture and high popularity. This difference is summarized as the media's subjective expression of the tradition and innovation of Shaolin Temple. The media has an important influence on the formation of the organic image of the destination. The research about the media representation provides a reference for shaping the tourism destination image.