Editorial policy

Alright, so you want to know about the editorial policy of this website. Well, here it goes.

Integrity and disclaimer

The content on Culture Explorer is entirely written by me, Qin Xie, and not a ghost writer or AI.

All of the on the ground research is done as part of my day job as a travel writer and through independent travel.

For assignments, I am sometimes fully hosted, partially supported and occasionally allowed expenses.

As most of the research trips are not exclusive to Culture Explorer, I haven’t always indicated the instances where I’ve been hosted.

Neither do I explicitly mention when I’ve travelled independently as it’s not always appropriate or integral to the story.

Where a post is researched and written exclusively for Culture Explorer, this will be made explicit in the posts that form that body of work (ugh, I know, legalese).

I will sometimes write about some aspect of the trip months or perhaps years after the first post. In this case, I feel that it’s no longer relevant to make an explicit declaration.

Needless to say, my opinions are my own and do not reflect that of anyone who has or will host me.

Affiliate links

There are no paid-for links on this website but there are affiliate links.

That is to say, if you buy something via an affiliate link, I may receive a small commission which helps to keep this site ticking along.

These links are always marked with an *.

Any sponsored content on the site will be clearly marked as such, as indeed will any other affiliation when relevant.

The display advertising on this site is served by an ad network and you can find out more about this in the section on Privacy Policy.