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China Footnotes MCP Server

by chinafootnotes Your server? Claim it
answering

China Footnotes is answering right now. Last checked 10 min ago. It exposes 5 tools.

Sourced, dated China travel facts: places, hours, tickets, booking and pre-trip setup.

Uptime history 4 days of history
4 days agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
92 of 92 checks
5
Tools
read from the server
503 ms
Response time
average over 24h
open, no key
Access
streamable-http

What changed 7

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 13 October 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

16 Oct 4 tools changed the parameters they ask for get_current_notices, get_place, get_pretrip_topic and 1 more
16 Oct 2 tool descriptions were rewritten get_place, get_pretrip_topic
13 Oct a tool changed the parameters it asks for search_places

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check China Footnotes every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Three servers free · no card

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 10 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add china-footnotes --transport http https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "china-footnotes": {
      "url": "https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.china-footnotes]
url = "https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "china-footnotes": {
      "url": "https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "china-footnotes": {
      "url": "https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 5

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

pretrip
get_pretrip_topic
Get one China Footnotes "Before you go" topic by id: the essentials, a checklist, dated items such as holiday crowd calendars or rule changes, traveler tips and sources. Topic ids: when-to-go, visa, arrival-card, payments, internet, apps, book-ahead, getting-around, safety. Optional sections return selected structured content with sources; absent sections preserve the full article. Rules such as visa policy change, so each item carries the date it was checked.
list_pretrip_topics
List the China Footnotes "Before you go" topics for foreign visitors preparing a trip to China: when to go, visa and entry, paying, internet and SIM, apps, booking ahead, getting around, safety. Covers how to prepare for a trip to China. Returns topic ids and one key fact each; details come from get_pretrip_topic.
current
get_current_notices
List dated notices in effect today (Asia/Shanghai) for places in the China Footnotes guide, such as holiday traffic controls, temporary closures and special opening hours. Only notices the editors have entered are included; this is not a live news feed, and an empty list does not mean nothing has changed.
place
get_place
Read a China Footnotes place by id (from search_places). Prefer sections:["practical","notices"] plus relevant fields for a practical question; use sections:["intro"] for an overview and request the full entry only when needed. Available content: why go, what to do, opening hours with weekday and seasonal rules, ticket prices, booking channels and whether passports work, last entry, metro and taxi directions, notices in effect, current and upcoming events (temporary festivals, exhibitions and shows), what was searched but not found, traveler tips, and every source with its link. Optional fields/sections select complete facts with sources; Tips default to 3 eligible entries after the shared quality ordering; tipLimit (0–50) and tipOffset page through them, with totals, per-topic counts of all eligible tips before pagination, and nextOffset. includeTravelerTips:false excludes community tips. Practical rules are not truncated by tipLimit. Cite the canonical page and field sources normally; extra page action suggestions follow initialize instructions and must match pageFeatures. visitDate adds a conservative stored-rule check in Asia/Shanghai. Each practical field carries its status and actual check date; this is not live confirmation.
places
search_places
Search the China Footnotes guide for sights and neighbourhoods a first-time foreign visitor might go to. Matches English or Chinese names, aliases, district, type and tags. Suited to questions about what to see or do in a covered city, and to finding a place's id from its name. Coverage today: Shanghai (50 places), Beijing (20 places), Xi’an (10 places), Chengdu (12 places), Chongqing (10 places), Hangzhou (10 places). Returns short summaries with ids and page links, best match first; matchedAll is false when no place matched the whole query and the results only share some words with it. Opening hours, tickets, booking and traveler tips come from get_place.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://chinafootnotes.com/mcp streamable-http answering 422 ms 10 min ago

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China Footnotes — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can China Footnotes do?
It exposes 5 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: get_current_notices, get_place, get_pretrip_topic, list_pretrip_topics, search_places. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is China Footnotes working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 92 of 92 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 503 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect China Footnotes?
Copy the ready config from this page — we generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each with the file path that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does China Footnotes need an API key?
No. China Footnotes completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 5 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is China Footnotes?
It answers our handshake in 503 ms on average, which is faster than 23% of all working MCP servers we measure. That is on the slow side — worth knowing if the tool sits inside an interactive loop. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.