China Footnotes

List dated notices in effect on a date (today in Asia/Shanghai unless date is given) for places in China Footnotes, such as holiday traffic controls, temporary closures and special opening hours, each with its sources. Filter by city or place. Only notices the editors have entered are included; this is not a live news feed, and an empty list does not mean nothing has changed.

Read one China Footnotes place by id (from search_places). For a practical question, pass sections:["practical","notices"] and only the fields needed; fields apply when sections includes "practical" or is omitted. Use sections:["intro"] for an overview; omit both for the full entry. Available content: why go, what to do, opening hours with weekday and seasonal rules, ticket prices, booking channels and whether passports work, last entry, metro and taxi directions, notices in effect, current and upcoming events (temporary festivals, exhibitions and shows), what was searched but not found, traveler tips, many of them firsthand reports from Chinese travelers and locals (routes, timing and crowds, entrances, food nearby, scams, what to expect), photos, and every source with its link. Optional fields/sections select complete facts with sources. Tips default to 3 eligible entries after the shared quality ordering; tipLimit (0–50) and tipOffset page through them, with totals, per-topic counts of all eligible tips before pagination, and nextOffset. includeTravelerTips:false excludes community tips. Practical rules are not truncated by tipLimit. Returns the canonical page link, field sources and the page interactions available (pageFeatures). visitDate adds a conservative stored-rule check in Asia/Shanghai. Each practical field carries its status and actual check date; this is not live confirmation.

Get one China Footnotes "Before you go" topic by id: the essentials, a checklist, dated items such as holiday crowd calendars or rule changes, traveler tips and sources. Topic ids come from list_pretrip_topics. Optional sections return selected structured content with sources; without sections the full article is returned. Rules such as visa policy change, so each item carries the date it was checked.

List the China Footnotes "Before you go" topics for foreign visitors preparing a trip to China: when to go, visa and entry, arrival card, paying, internet and SIM, apps, booking ahead, getting around, safety. Returns each topic's id, title, one key fact, check date and page link; the full topic comes from get_pretrip_topic.

Search China Footnotes for sights and neighbourhoods in the Chinese cities it covers. Matches English or Chinese names, aliases, district, type and tags. Suited to questions about what to see or do in a city, and to finding a place's id from its name. With no arguments it lists places and the city ids covered; asked about a city it does not cover, it says so rather than returning unrelated places. Returns short summaries with ids and page links, best match first; matchedAll is false when no place matched the whole query and the results only share some words with it. Opening hours, tickets, booking and traveler tips come from get_place.