Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 September 2026.

This policy explains what Beijing Tourism Guide (www.beijingtourism.org) collects when you read it, who else can see that information, and what you can do about it. It describes the site as it works today. Where something is planned but not yet running, it says so rather than describing it as though it were live.

The short version

You can read every guide on this site without giving us anything. There are no accounts, no logins, no newsletter, no comments and nothing to sign up for. The only way to hand us personal information deliberately is to fill in the contact form, and that is emailed to a person rather than stored in a database. Google Analytics measures traffic, and an affiliate network, Travelpayouts, credits bookings made through links here. What runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from, and the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page switches either off. No display advertising runs on the site yet; the section on it below explains what will change when it starts.

Who is responsible for this site

Beijing Tourism Guide is an independently published website. For data protection purposes, the publisher of beijingtourism.org is the data controller for the personal information described here. The contact form is the route for any question or request about your data, including the rights set out further down this page.

Information you give us: the contact form

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, the topic of your message, optionally the URL of the page you are writing about, and your message. Your IP address and browser user-agent are captured alongside the submission as a standard anti-spam measure.

Submissions are sent by email to the site’s editor and are not written to the website’s database, published, or displayed anywhere on the site. We use what you send to answer you and, where you have reported a problem, to correct the guide in question. We do not add you to a mailing list, because there is no mailing list. We do not sell, rent or share contact form data with anyone, and it is not used for advertising or profiling.

Messages are kept in the editor’s email account for as long as they remain useful — a correction may be kept until the guide is next revised, so that we can check we actually fixed what you told us about. If you would like your message deleted sooner, ask and it will be deleted.

The legal basis for handling this information is legitimate interest: you have written to us and we need to be able to read and reply. Email delivery is handled by the site’s hosting provider, DreamHost, which processes messages in transit.

Information collected automatically

Server logs

Our hosting provider records standard web server logs for every request: IP address, timestamp, the page requested, HTTP status, referring page and user-agent string. These are generated by the hosting infrastructure, are used for security and diagnosing faults, and are retained according to DreamHost’s own retention schedule rather than ours. Cloudflare, which delivers the site, handles each request on its way through, and it can also measure how quickly pages load, without setting a cookie.

Google Analytics

The site runs Google Analytics 4, connected through the Site Kit by Google plugin. It tells us which guides are read, roughly where in the world readers are, what kind of device they use, and how they arrived. This is what tells us that, for example, the visa guides need checking more often than the temple guides.

Once it is allowed to run, Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser and processes data on Google’s infrastructure, which includes servers outside your country. We do not have access to anything in Analytics that identifies you personally. Whether it runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from, as set out under “Your choices, and what runs before you make them” below, and the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page switches it off at any time. You can also prevent Analytics entirely with Google’s official browser opt-out add-on, or by blocking the scripts in your browser or an extension. How Google handles this data is described in Google’s privacy policy and in how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Google Search Console

Search Console is connected to the site and shows us aggregated search queries and click data. It does not set cookies on your browser and does not identify individual readers.

Caching

The site uses WP Super Cache to serve pages faster. It may set a technical cookie to identify requests that must bypass the cache. It does not track you and is not used for analytics or advertising.

Advertising

No display advertising is currently shown on this site. The booking links described in the next section are a separate arrangement, and they are running now.

We intend to fund the site with advertising served by Google AdSense. When that starts, this section will be updated with the date it went live, and the following will apply. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalised advertising at any time by visiting Google’s Ads Settings, and you can opt out of third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.com. Third-party vendors other than Google may also serve ads on this site and set their own cookies, subject to the same opt-out routes. Full details are in Google’s advertising privacy notice.

The consent tool this site uses is already running: it governs analytics and the booking partner today, and it is described below under “Your choices, and what runs before you make them”. If display advertising is added, this section will be updated before it appears, to say how consent for it is collected.

Booking links and commission

Some links on this site earn a commission. Beijing Tourism Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

Your choices, and what runs before you make them

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice: analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. Readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates get a notice instead: everything described on this page starts when they arrive, the notice says so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_f48eb4 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. An answer lasts up to a year, and a refusal given in the dialog six months, before you are asked again. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Beijing Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Beijing Tourism Guide treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. The button switches off everything except the strictly necessary — Travelpayouts and any ad partner included — and the link reopens the full choice at any time. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

Cookies, in summary

• Analytics cookies — set by Google Analytics 4 to measure readership, once analytics is allowed to run.
• Technical cookies — may be set by the caching layer to decide whether to serve you a cached page. Currently in use.
• Booking-partner cookie — am_user_session, a random session identifier the Travelpayouts script sets once advertising is allowed, renewed while you read and gone 30 minutes after you stop. The same script keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage. No display-advertising cookies are set, because no display advertising runs.
• Your cookie choice — cookie_consent_f48eb4 records the answer you give in the cookie dialog or bar, so that you are not asked on every page, and cookie_consent_f48eb4_loc remembers for a day which country you are reading from. Both are set by this site and readable by nobody else.
• Login and session cookies — only ever set for the site’s own administrators. Readers do not receive them, because there is nothing here to log into.

Every browser lets you block or delete cookies, and blocking them will not stop you reading anything on this site. The cookie policy lists every cookie and item of browser storage in use, generated from the services actually running here.

What we do not do

We do not sell personal information for money; how the broader US state-law meaning of “sale” and “sharing” is handled is set out under “If you are reading this in the United States” above. We do not run a newsletter or any other mailing list. Comments are closed across the site, so there is no comment data. There are no reader accounts and no e-commerce, so we never see or handle payment details. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13, and the site is not directed at children; if you believe a child has sent us something through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.

Links to other sites

The guides link out to official sources — the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs consular service, the China Online Visa Application portal, China Railway’s booking platform and similar. Those sites have their own privacy policies and we have no control over and no responsibility for what they collect once you leave this site. Some links to booking and travel sites earn a commission, as described under “Booking links and commission” above.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to how it is used, to restrict its use, or to receive a copy of it. Readers in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have these rights under the GDPR and UK GDPR; residents of California and several other US states have comparable rights, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them.

In practice, the personal information we hold about a reader is a contact form message they chose to send us, if they sent one, and the record of their cookie choice described above, so most requests amount to “delete my message”, which we will do on request. Use the contact form to ask. If you are in the EEA or UK and you are not satisfied with how we handle a request, you can complain to your national data protection authority.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, analytics and the booking partner rest on your consent, which is why, for readers there, neither runs until you have agreed, and why you can withdraw that agreement at any time from the Cookie settings link. Answering a message you send rests on legitimate interest, as described above, and so does keeping server logs for security.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes materially — for instance when display advertising is added — the date at the top will be updated and the section concerned rewritten to describe what is actually running. We will not backdate or quietly amend it.

What changed on 30 September 2026. The site now carries booking links through the Travelpayouts affiliate network and runs a consent tool, and this policy describes both. The statements that no advertising scripts ran, that no advertising cookies were set and that the consent mechanism was not yet live were removed, because they stopped being true when those two things were added. No display advertising runs yet.