Editorial
Editorial Method
How WaytoEast selects sources, schedules reviews, handles policy-sensitive content, and processes corrections.
Source Tier Ranking
Every claim on WaytoEast is backed by at least one source. Sources are ranked in four tiers, highest trust first. When a lower-tier source conflicts with a higher-tier one, the higher tier governs.
Official official
Chinese central-government bodies: the National Immigration Administration (NIA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FMPRC), the State Council portal, and embassy/consulate domains. These are the ground-truth sources for visa rules, entry requirements, and customs regulations.
Examples: nia.gov.cn, fmprc.gov.cn, english.www.gov.cn, *.china-embassy.gov.cn
Provider provider
Official operators of transport, payment, and platform services: China Railway (12306.cn), Alipay, WeChat/Weixin, DiDi, and named airport authority sites. These sources determine the real-time rules of the systems travelers use every day.
Examples: 12306.cn, alipay.com, wechat.com, weixin.qq.com, didiglobal.com
City city
City and provincial government portals, official metro operators, and municipal airport sites. These sources cover city-level regulations, transit maps, and local service rules that complement national policy.
Examples: beijing.gov.cn, shanghai.gov.cn, gzmtr.com, shanghaimetro.net
Media media
General media, travel forums, app stores, foreign government advisories, and NGO publications. These sources provide context, community experience, and advisory perspective, but are subordinate to official and provider documentation when conflicts arise.
Examples: gov.uk, travel.state.gov, tripadvisor.com, reddit.com
The full source-tier classification logic is encoded in data/sources.ts and applied automatically to every sourceLinks entry across the site.
Review Cadence
Content is reviewed on a scheduled basis, not only when a reader reports an error. High-policy-risk categories are reviewed more frequently because rule changes affect readers' travel decisions directly.
- Visa Entry
- Payments
- Internet
- Transport
- Accommodation
- Basics
- Language
- Food
- Attractions
- Culture Law
- Safety Health
- Shopping Tax Refund
A review means re-reading the article against the current state of official and provider documentation, updating any changed details, and advancing the page's updatedAt date. Reviews are triggered earlier whenever relevant regulations are publicly announced as changing.
Policy-Sensitive Content Handling
Certain topics — visa and entry requirements, mobile payments, internet access, and telecom regulations — carry elevated risk of reader harm if the information becomes outdated or is misread. These pages are subject to additional handling rules.
Stale Content Notice
A Stale Content notice appears at the top of a page when both conditions are true:
- The page belongs to a policy-sensitive category (visa-entry, payments, internet, or compliance-related accommodation pages).
- The page's
updatedAtdate is more than 9 months in the past from the current date.
The notice prompts the reader to verify the information against an official source before acting and adds the page to the internal review queue.
Risk Callout
A standardized risk callout is shown near any section that discusses policy-sensitive topics — specifically: visa rules, entry requirements, payment limits, telecom compliance, app availability restrictions, and tax matters.
Payment, telecom, app, and platform rules can change. Always verify current requirements directly with the relevant official authority or service provider before acting.
This copy is fixed across all pages so readers encounter a consistent signal wherever policy-sensitive content appears.
Correction Workflow
Readers who spot outdated or incorrect information are the most valuable source of quality signals. WaytoEast treats every correction submission as high-priority editorial input.
- 1
Submit
Use the Contact form and select Correction from the category dropdown. Include the URL of the page, the incorrect detail, and a source link if you have one. You can also email hello@waytoeast.com directly.
- 2
Acknowledge
Correction submissions are acknowledged within 3 working days. We confirm receipt, note the claimed issue, and assign it to the next review cycle or immediately if the error is safety-critical.
- 3
Verify
The editor checks the submission against official and provider sources at the tier ranking described above. If the correction is substantiated, the page is updated, the change is noted inline, and the updatedAt date is advanced.
- 4
Publish
The corrected page is deployed in the next build. For critical corrections (visa rule changes, payment limit changes, app availability changes), deployment happens as soon as the fix is verified and built.
- 5
Respond
If you provided an email address, we reply once the correction is live. We do not publish submission details without permission.
Response SLA: Correction submissions acknowledged within 3 working days. Corrections classified as safety-critical (visa, entry, health) are prioritized for same-day review when received during business hours.