Who writes what
Every article on this site carries a byline that links to a real author page. There are two kinds, and the difference between them is deliberate.
Destination guides and attraction guides are bylined to a person — Alan Chen. That work is experience-led: the value in it is that somebody actually went, so the byline names whoever did.
Reference material — the planning guides and the visa checker — is bylined to Offbeat China Editorial, with a named reviewer credited on the page. Entry policies, fare rules and regulations are compiled and maintained rather than written from a single trip, so a personal byline would misdescribe how they were made. Naming a reviewer keeps them accountable to a human anyway.
What “Verified” means
The verification date on a guide is the last time a person checked the facts in it — not the date it was published, and not the date the page was last rebuilt. Those are tracked separately for exactly this reason: a guide written a year ago and re-checked last month is current, and ought to be able to say so.
For attractions, verification covers the things that change and that ruin a day out when they are wrong: opening hours, seasonal closures, ticket prices and tiers, and whether advance reservation is required. For entry rules it covers the policy itself, the maximum stay, and transit and regional eligibility.
Where there is no date, no claim is being made. We would rather show nothing than imply a check that did not happen.
Where the facts come from
Entry and visa policy comes from primary government sources — principally China’s National Immigration Administration, and the Hainan provincial government list for the Hainan visa-free scheme. Where a primary source is unreachable, we cross-check several reputable secondary sources rather than trusting one. We never take a country count from a single aggregator: the published lists disagree with each other more often than you would expect.
Practical detail is checked against whoever operates the thing — the venue, the railway, the airline, the app — and then dated. Prices are given in the currency you will actually pay in, and they move; treat any figure as of its verification date, not as of today.
How we handle things that change
China’s entry rules change every few months, sometimes with little warning. Pages on this site rebuild automatically within the hour, so a correction made in our CMS reaches readers the same day rather than waiting on a site deployment.
That matters most on the visa checker, which is generated from the underlying country rules rather than hand-written prose — so when a country moves between schemes, the tables, the counts and the dates all move with it, and none of them can quietly disagree.
Corrections
If something here is wrong or has gone stale, please tell us — hello@offbeatchina-guide.com. It is genuinely useful: conditions on the ground change faster than any publisher can check unprompted.
When a report checks out, we correct the page and reset its verification date. When we cannot confirm it, we say so, rather than quietly leaving both versions standing.
Affiliate links, and how this site makes money
Some outbound links to booking sites are affiliate links: if you book through one, we may earn a commission from that company. It never costs you more — the price is the same as going direct.
Where those links appear, the disclosure appears next to them — not buried in a footer or on a page you would have to go looking for. We choose the placements ourselves. They are not sold, and no company can pay to be recommended here, ranked higher, or written about at all. Our own experiences and tours carry no affiliate links.
The full commercial terms are in our Terms of Service.
What this site is not
Nothing here is legal or immigration advice. What you need in order to enter China depends on your nationality, your route, your passport type and your own circumstances, and the only authority on your case is an official one. Confirm the current rules with the relevant Chinese embassy or consulate, the National Immigration Administration, or your airline before you book. Our job is to tell you what to expect and what to ask — not to replace the official answer.
Getting in touch
Questions, corrections and complaints all go to the same place: hello@offbeatchina-guide.com, or through our contact page. We answer everything.