Hello from the people behind the footnotes.
Dear traveller,
Thank you for taking the time to look around. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably read a few of our pages already, and we hope they’ve helped.
People often ask us two things: why we built this site, and who we are. So we’d like to take this chance to tell you the story of our small team.
Who we are
First, a little about us. We’re university friends who grew up in China and went to the UK to study. Today we’re back in China, building travel tech with one quiet hope: that people from different cultures can understand each other a little better.
Why this matters to us
Living between the two, we’ve seen how many misunderstandings China and the West hold about each other. Honestly, it’s heartbreaking. So it’s been a real joy to see more and more young people come to China in recent years.
In 2024, while we were still studying at the University of Cambridge, we started the Cambridge Capy China Trip [1]: every year it brings dozens of Cambridge students from around the world on a summer journey to see China for themselves, and the Jianshan Scholarship we set up [2] helps those who need financial support to come.
The wall we kept hitting
Every year we hit the same wall. Much of what a visitor needs (today’s opening hours, whether to book, which metro exit to take) can’t be found in English, and what can be found is often out of date or misleading.
The real answers do exist. They’re just in Chinese, inside apps like Xiaohongshu, Dianping and WeChat that a search from abroad rarely reaches. That makes a trip here much harder than it needs to be.
What we built
So we set out to break down that information barrier. For every place, we read what locals read: official sites and notices first, then Chinese apps and travellers’ own posts. Then we turn it all into one plain-English page, where every fact keeps its source and the date we read it.
When sources disagree, we show you both. When we can’t confirm something, we say so instead of guessing.
For you, and for your AI
We’ve also noticed that more and more people plan their trips with AI. So from the very start, we wanted to build a site that people and AI both enjoy reading.
We’ve put a lot of care into small animations and details that make reading here a little more fun, and into plain-text pages and simple ways in that let AI assistants read us easily too.
What we hope
We hope this helps more people come to China, see it as it really is, and connect across cultures along the way.
We started in Shanghai and now cover 112 places in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, Chongqing and Hangzhou. More cities, and more languages, will follow.
If something on a page is out of date, or there’s a question we haven’t answered, write to us at will@chinafootnotes.com. We’d love to hear from you.
See you in China,
William Wang [3], on behalf of the team
[1] Capy China Trip, the trip we run every year. Read what participants wrote: 1 · 2 · 3
[2] The trip and the Jianshan Scholarship, announced on Instagram.
[3] William Wang on LinkedIn.
How we check
Official first, travellers second, and we say so when they disagree.
What we read
Venue websites and official notices; city, metro and police announcements; Xiaohongshu, Dianping and WeChat articles; travellers on Reddit, forums and YouTube; news reports and ticket sites. 3943 sources for 112 places, 950 of them official or government pages. Every fact on a place page links to its source.
How a page is made
1. Collect: search official pages and Chinese platforms for each place.
2. Compare: where sources differ, show both and use the more cautious one.
3. Write: short, plain answers that keep their source link and the date read.
4. Review: a separate pass; anything unconfirmed says "not found yet".
Some facts are also confirmed by phone or on site.
How often
Every place shows when its sources were last read; every source keeps the date we read it, and the date it was published when the page shows one. Official pages are checked once a day for changes; nothing on a place page changes until the change has been reviewed. Notices carry start and end dates and expire.
What we stand for
- Independent. We take no commissions, ads or paid placements.
- "Not found yet" beats a guess: if we couldn't confirm something, the page says so.
- Made for your AI too: every page also comes as plain text your assistant can read, with the same sources and dates.
- We never infer passport, foreign-card or foreign-phone support from domestic visitors' experience.
- Dates stay with the facts: each place and each source shows when we read it.
- No sign-up, and we never ask for passport or card details.
Who runs China Footnotes
China Footnotes is run by Capy Culture Tech Ltd. We’re a small travel-tech team building a world where cultures understand each other a little better.
Contact
Capy Culture Tech Ltd · Lane 333, Xule Road, Qingpu District, Shanghai, China · will@chinafootnotes.com