Sources and method
How we check, and how to correct us
A guide is only useful if you know how far to trust it. So every page says what we read, what we tried, and what we have not done yet.
How evidence checks work
A red seal means the stated requirement or route has sufficient supporting evidence. It does not mean our team registered, paid or travelled. Official instructions can establish supported requirements; a live form alone does not prove a successful card settlement. Independent checks may remain incomplete, and not-applicable items are excluded from the total.
Official rules
Check the authority or operator’s rule and record its publication and review dates.
Procedure and interface
Use the actual interface or an illustrated official procedure, stating which was reviewed and any access limits.
Foreign-passport requirements
Check the supported passport and identity process. This is not a promise that every identity check will pass.
Payment route
Check the named payment channel and its supported scope. A form or unsupported anecdote alone does not establish successful settlement.
Entry or use requirements
Check the operator’s redemption or admission requirements, or well-supported actual use. State whether the evidence is a procedure, a real example or aggregate data.
A red seal means evidence supports that item. It is not a claim that we personally completed a trip.
Evidence is evaluated item by item, not as a cumulative level. Not applicable is excluded, not passed. Source-backed status is not personal testing; any future field test must record its actual date, route and conditions.
Three kinds of fact
Stated by the authority or the operator that runs the service. We link to the page and give the date we read it.
What a booking screen or app showed on a given date. Screens change without notice, so these carry the shortest re-check period.
Reported by travellers or other guides, and not yet confirmed from the operator. Useful, but never written as a rule.
How we grade products
The trip planner lists tours, tickets, transfers and hotels next to the official way of doing each thing. Each listing gets two separate numbers. Quality is the same for every visitor and comes from evidence. Fit is about your trip. Money enters neither.
Key facts, 40%
We check what is included, where you meet, the cancellation terms, whether a foreign passport and a foreign card are accepted, and whether English service is confirmed. A failed check on passports or cancellation caps the grade at 丙 (C).
Reputation, 35%
Ratings from each platform, weighted by how many reviews stand behind them. We mark listings down when platforms disagree, when recent reviews are falling, or when only one platform has any. We show totals and link out; we do not republish reviews.
Operator, 15%
Whether the company behind the listing can be identified.
Price, 10%
Whether the price sits within the range of comparable listings on the sampling date. Far below the range counts against a listing as much as far above.
The grades
甲 (A) is 80 or more, 乙 (B) 65 to 79, 丙 (C) 50 to 64. Below 50 we do not list it. With fewer than 50 reviews or fewer than three checks we could settle, we say “not enough evidence” instead of guessing.
Where listings come from
Listings come from booking platforms’ partner feeds. We read public official pages only to check what a listing claims. Where we earn a commission, the listing says so. The free official route is always shown first.
Our own products
Some listings are run by the company behind this site. Each one is marked “Run by us”. They go through the same grading, with three extra rules. A check that rests only on our own word counts as unknown, not as a pass. Identifying the operator earns no credit, since we would be vouching for ourselves. And one of ours is never shown alone: at most one per stop, next to an independent alternative where one exists. When two listings tie, the independent one is shown first.
Changes to these rules
Every listing shows the version of the rules it was graded under. When we change a weight or a cut-off, the version and date change with it.
When sources disagree
We follow the authority or operator first, then its current terms, then the live screen, then traveller reports. Even official sites carry outdated passages, so we compare against the page that is currently in force and say when a conflict is unresolved.
Corrections
Tell us what you saw and when. Every correction is logged on the page it changes, with the date. We do not change a page’s date unless a fact on it was actually re-checked.
corrections@chinachecked.orgMoney
Guides are free and need no login. Where a page links to a paid service, we name the provider, say whether we earn from it, and always show the free official route first.
What we do not do
We do not invent test bookings, publish reviews we cannot trace, or mark a page as checked because a robot fetched it. If we cannot keep a fact current, we label it out of date.
Languages
This site is written in English and translated into Chinese and Russian. Sources are quoted as published. If a translation and the English page disagree, the English page is the one we checked.