About the project
China Guidebook is an independent travel guide to mainland China, written for people planning a first trip from abroad.
It is for readers who need to sort out entry rules, payments, connectivity and train tickets before they land, and who want to know which of the famous sights are worth their limited time.
We don’t write from memory and we don’t retell other people’s articles. Every rule, price and timetable in a guide is traced to the page of the authority or operator that sets it, and the date of that check is printed on the guide. How that works, and who does it, is explained below.
Who makes this guide
China Guidebook is made by an independent travel publisher: one editor, a set of research tools and a fixed way of checking every number before it goes live. The editor is A. Kobtsev, whose name is in the footer of every page. There is no team of local experts behind the byline and nobody claiming years of life in China; what stands behind the guide is the checking process described here.
The site is one of a family of country guides run on the same editorial system, so the rules below are not written for this page alone: the same source checks, the same photo policy and the same verification badge apply to all of them. Corrections go out as soon as a reader or a re-check finds something wrong, and the date on the guide moves with them.
How topics are chosen
Topics come from what people search for before a trip to China, not from what we felt like writing about: which entry rules apply to my passport, how do I pay without a Chinese bank account, how do I buy a train ticket, which apps work. If a question is asked often and the existing answers are thin or out of date, it gets a guide.
Where a guide recommends a specific place, such as a restaurant, a tea house or a viewpoint, that place has to be rated highly across several independent sources, and the guide says why it was picked. One glowing review while everyone else is silent is not a consensus, and the place stays out.
How every number is checked
Each rule, price, timetable and date in a guide is traced to the page of the body that sets it: the immigration authority for entry rules, the railway for trains, the sight itself for tickets and opening hours. The link to that page and the date we read it are kept in the guide’s source record, so any number can be retraced.
Before a guide is published, an automated check reads those pages and stops the build if a number cannot be found on them. Aggregators, booking marketplaces and other people’s blogs don’t count as sources, however popular they are. Even so, a price is correct as of the check date, not a guarantee: confirm the fare or the ticket on the official page before you pay.
Photos and sources
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and other sources under free licences, with the author, the licence and a link to the original under each frame. Nothing is lifted from other travel sites, and if a place has no usable photo the guide goes out with fewer pictures rather than a wrong one.
Sources are held to the same standard as photos. The pages behind each number, the official documents the rules come from and the date each was checked stay on record for every guide. Wikipedia is used for geography, such as distances between towns, never for prices, opening hours or entry rules.
How the guide is made
Research and first drafts are produced with AI tools. The editor writes the brief, directs the work, checks every number against the official page, rewrites what reads like a machine and decides what gets published. Nothing goes live without that pass, and the date of it is the one printed on the guide.
That is also why the family of guides shares one system rather than separate ones: the checks are built into the publishing step, not left to memory. When an operator changes a fare or an authority changes a rule, the guide is corrected and its date moves forward.
How the project pays for itself
Some links on the site are affiliate links: accommodation, tours, insurance and connectivity. If you follow such a link and book something, we get a small commission from the service. The price for you stays the same, and that income is what keeps the project running and updated.
Partnership doesn’t affect what gets recommended: a place or a service makes it into the guide on the checks above, not because it has an affiliate programme. If it’s better or more honest to recommend an option without an affiliate link, we recommend it.