How we check our guides
Every guide on Guangzhou Handbook says how it was checked and on what date, right under the title. These are the two labels you will see:
- Last checked [date] against official sources. We compared every fact in the guide with the sources listed at the bottom of the page on that date. Nobody from our team went there to check it in person, and the guide doesn't claim they did.
- Checked in person on [date] by [name] in [place]. Someone also checked the guide on the ground in Guangzhou. These guides include photos we took ourselves, captioned with the place and date.
Sources we use
We start with the organisation that makes the rule or runs the service:
- China's National Immigration Administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese embassies for entry rules
- Guangzhou Metro, Baiyun Airport, China Railway and ferry operators for transport
- Alipay, WeChat Pay and app makers' own help pages for payments and apps
- the Canton Fair organiser's official notices for fair dates and registration
- venues' official sites for opening hours, tickets and addresses
We use news reports only for context, never as the only source for a rule. Forums and social media help us find the questions travellers ask and the myths they repeat; we check every claim against an official source before it goes into a guide. Each guide lists its sources with links.
How we write
We use AI tools to help research and draft guides. Every guide is checked against the official sources listed on the page and reviewed by our editor before publishing; guides marked "Checked in person" were also verified on the ground in Guangzhou.
Visa rules
Entry rules come from one dataset that feeds the visa-free checker, the visa guides and the notice at the top of every page, so they always agree. We recheck it at least once a month, and update it on the same day when an official notice changes the rules. It was last checked on October 17, 2026. Official sources prevail if anything differs.
Photos
Photos from libraries such as Wikimedia Commons are all credited on our photo credits page, and large ones also through the small i in their corner. They show places in general and are never presented as our own. We only crop them on screen and never edit, combine or generate images.
Keeping guides current
We recheck every guide at least once every 12 months, and sooner when a source changes. The "last checked" date changes only when we have actually rechecked the guide. When a fact changes, the guide's update history at the bottom of the page records what changed and when.
Corrections
If something is wrong or out of date, tell us which page and what you saw. We check the report against the source, fix the guide if it is wrong and note the change in its update history, usually within a week.
Independence
No business pays to appear in a guide or reviews a guide before it is published. The site is funded by display ads, which Google chooses; an ad does not mean we recommend the advertiser.