Editorial standards

Sources come first

We check facts against the most direct source available, in this order of preference:

• Primary texts for idioms, poems and history: the classical work an idiom or line comes from, such as the Book of Songs (诗经), the Records of the Grand Historian (史记) or the Book of Han (汉书), read in the original Chinese.
• Official publications for exams, statistics and policy, for example the official HSK syllabus and Ministry of Public Security name reports.
• Established reference works and news outlets for dramas and current events: the broadcaster or platform itself, Wikipedia in Chinese and English, and newspapers that name their sources.

We do not treat anonymous fan sites, content farms or machine-generated news pages as sources.

When sources disagree

Air dates, episode counts and exam rules are often reported differently by different outlets. When reliable sources conflict, we name each source and what it says, or we leave the claim out. We do not guess, and we do not present a projection, such as an expected finale date, as a fact.

Chinese text, pinyin and translations

Characters, pinyin and glosses are checked character by character. A name or quotation is only given in Chinese if we can confirm the exact characters. Quotations from classical texts are copied from a published edition, not recalled from memory; where editions differ, we say so.

How we use AI tools

We use AI tools to help research, draft and translate articles. Nothing is published on the strength of an AI tool alone: every article goes through source checks and a set of automated quality checks covering links, language, consistency with our existing pages and claims that need a citation. Translations into our six other languages are produced with AI and keep the original Chinese text unchanged.

Dramas and spoilers

We only explain an ending after the finale has aired, and we say which details come from the drama and which come only from the source novel. We cover the language, history and culture of a show, not gossip or allegations about the people in it.

Corrections

When we find a mistake, or a reader points one out, we fix the article and the translations that came from it. Because the idiom histories are shared with our iOS app, a correction to an idiom is made in both places.

Independence

The site is funded by advertising. Advertisers have no say over what we write, and we do not accept payment to cover a drama, product or person.