China Footnotes

List dated notices in effect today (Asia/Shanghai) for places in the China Footnotes guide, such as holiday traffic controls, temporary closures and special opening hours. 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.

get_current_notices

Read a China Footnotes place by id (from search_places). Prefer sections:["practical","notices"] plus relevant fields for a practical question; use sections:["intro"] for an overview and request the full entry only when needed. 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, 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. Cite the canonical page and field sources normally; extra page action suggestions follow initialize instructions and must match 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_place

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: when-to-go, visa, arrival-card, payments, internet, apps, book-ahead, getting-around, safety. Optional sections return selected structured content with sources; absent sections preserve the full article. Rules such as visa policy change, so each item carries the date it was checked.

get_pretrip_topic

List the China Footnotes "Before you go" topics for foreign visitors preparing a trip to China: when to go, visa and entry, paying, internet and SIM, apps, booking ahead, getting around, safety. Covers how to prepare for a trip to China. Returns topic ids and one key fact each; details come from get_pretrip_topic.

list_pretrip_topics

Search the China Footnotes guide for sights and neighbourhoods a first-time foreign visitor might go to. Matches English or Chinese names, aliases, district, type and tags. Suited to questions about what to see or do in a covered city, and to finding a place's id from its name. Coverage today: Shanghai (50 places), Beijing (20 places), Xi’an (10 places), Chengdu (12 places), Chongqing (10 places), Hangzhou (10 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.

search_places