Three kinds of contribution
NiceYiwu publishes three things from readers, and the same rules apply to all of them: reviews (a visit to a restaurant, hotel or hangout you actually made, with a star rating and optional photos), corrections (a price, closure, move or halal doubt about an existing listing, sent through the report form), and photos (menu, bill, dish, shopfront — attached to either). Around them sit the smaller actions: replies to a review, likes, saves and reports. Until the review composer opens at launch, reviews, corrections and photos arrive by the contact form or email, and a local reads every one. Quotes on the site from Xiaohongshu (小红书) posts are not reader contributions: they are public posts we paraphrase or quote with the platform’s masked nickname and a nofollow link, under the sourcing rules on How We Review.
Who can post, and under what name
- Sign in with a one-time link sent to your email, or with Google. No passwords to remember.
- 16 or older. Accounts belonging to anyone younger are deleted with their posts.
- One person, one account. Second accounts used to boost a rating or dodge a suspension are closed, together with the original.
- Your display name can be your first name or a nickname. It may not impersonate another person, a business or NiceYiwu, and it may not be an advertisement (“Best Yiwu Agent — WhatsApp …”).
- Business accounts are for owners and managers who have claimed their listing through For Restaurants & Hotels. They post replies under the business name, marked as the business; they do not write reviews.
- How we handle your email, photos and IP address: Privacy & Disclosure.
What makes a useful review
- Been there. Review only places you visited in person. Say the month and year; a review without a date is published as “undated” and weighs less.
- Numbers beat adjectives. What you ordered, what you paid, how many people, how long you waited. “Great kebab” helps nobody; “mixed grill ¥68, two of us, 20-minute queue at 13:00 on a Friday” helps everyone.
- Photos. Menu with prices, the bill, the dish, the shopfront with its Chinese name. Faces of other guests must not be identifiable; staff only with their consent. No screenshots of other people’s posts.
- Halal — the one rule we enforce hardest. Say what you checked: certificate on the wall (photograph it), asked the owner (what did they say, in which language), read the menu (no pork, no alcohol). “It is halal, everyone eats there” is an opinion and is published as one; it never changes a tag. See the responsibility section below.
- Languages. English, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish and Chinese are all fine; we translate for the site and keep your original text alongside.
- One review per visit. Go again, write again — a second dated visit is the most useful review there is.
The small actions have rules too
- Ratings score your own visit — food, room, service, value — not the owner’s nationality, the neighbourhood or a political view. Stars never set or change a halal tag; that is done only by evidence (see below).
- Replies add information or ask a genuine question: “Was the ¥68 grill for one or two?” is welcome; arguing with every negative review is not. Keep it to the place, not the person.
- Likes say “this review helped me”. Coordinated liking — groups, paid likes, a business asking customers to like its good reviews — is treated like a fake review.
- Saves are private bookmarks; nobody else sees them.
The rules that protect every rating on the site
- No fake reviews. Do not review a place you did not visit, write for someone else, or post several reviews of the same visit.
- No undisclosed payment. If you got the meal, the room or a discount free or cheaper in exchange for a review — or you were invited by the owner — say so in the first line (“The owner invited us and did not charge for the meal.”). Disclosed reviews are published and labelled; undisclosed ones are removed when we find out.
- No review-for-reward offers. A business may ask customers to leave an honest review. It may not offer money, discounts, free dishes or gifts for a review or for a particular rating. Report such offers; they count against the business.
- Relationships must be disclosed — and some cannot review at all. Owners, staff, their relatives, sourcing agents paid by the business and competitors may not review that business. Anyone with a looser link (a friend, a supplier, a regular who gets a discount) says so in the review.
- Merchants disclose in replies, too. Business replies are always shown as the business. A staff member posting a review of their own workplace from a personal account is a fake review.
What you can upload
- Your own photos only. No screenshots of other people’s posts, no images taken from the web.
- No faces of strangers without consent. Other diners and passers-by must not be identifiable; blur or crop them. Staff only with their permission. Children never identifiable.
- Useful beats pretty. The menu with prices, the bill, the shopfront with its Chinese name, the dish, and — for halal claims — the certificate on the wall. A photographed certificate is the single most useful thing you can send us.
- No personal data in the frame. Crop out phone numbers, names and order numbers on receipts, and anything on a screen.
- No ads, watermarks with contact details, or graphic content. A photo of a genuine hygiene problem is fine; describe it factually.
- Location data is removed for you. Photos are re-encoded on upload, which strips GPS and other hidden data. What is visible in the picture is still up to you.
Who is responsible for what
The tag on a listing is ours, and the responsibility for it is ours. It follows the four-tier evidence rule (Amap-listed / Reported / Cuisine-based / Not checked) and the basis is written under every tag. A reader review can raise a doubt or add evidence; it cannot set the tag. In practice:
- Say what you saw, not what you concluded. A useful halal line looks like: “清真 board with Arabic over the door; halal certificate from the local Islamic association on the wall, dated 2026 (photo attached); owner said he is Hui from Gansu; no pork or beer on the menu.” Attach a photo of the certificate or the menu whenever you can.
- If you photographed a halal certificate, send it: the issuer, expiry date and scope are checked and recorded separately; a certificate does not change an Amap directory category, and your photo is credited to you (first name or nickname).
- If you saw pork or alcohol at a place we tag as halal in any tier, report it with a photo if you can; the tag is set to under review the same day and we visit or call in Chinese within 7 days. If confirmed, the tag drops to Not checked or the place is removed, and the correction is noted on the listing with the date.
- If you write “halal” in a review without saying what you checked, the review is published but the word is shown as your opinion (“the reviewer believes it is halal”) and does not count as a source.
- We do not accept halal claims from the business itself as evidence — an owner saying “we are halal” is recorded as the shop’s own statement, the same weight as its sign.
- Your responsibility as a reader is the ordinary one: check the tag’s basis before you eat, ask at the counter (这是清真的吗？), and tell us when the ground truth has changed. The How We Review page explains the tiers; the Lanzhou noodle explainer shows the 30-second check.
What gets removed, what does not
- Removed: advertising, affiliate codes, or reviews posted by the business, its staff or its competitors; personal attacks, discrimination, or content about a person rather than the food, room or service; reviews of places you did not visit, or copied from other sites; duplicate reviews of the same visit; photos showing identifiable strangers or price lists photographed against a trader’s wish.
- Not removed: negative reviews. A review is never taken down because a business dislikes it. If a business disputes it as fake, we check on site and publish the outcome under the review.
- Edited, with a note: a review that names a price or hours we later verify as changed gets a dated “since updated” line under it, never a silent edit.
First-time reviewers are checked by a local before their review is shown, usually within 48 hours; later reviews appear immediately and are checked afterwards. Reviews are signed with the name or nickname you give; email and WhatsApp numbers are never shown (see Privacy & Disclosure).
How a report becomes a fix
- You send it
Contact form or WhatsApp (+86 186 6668 0913). Include the place’s Chinese name if you have it, the date, and a photo of the shopfront, menu or bill.
- We acknowledge within 2 days
You get a reply saying what we will check. Anonymous reports are checked too; they just cannot be credited.
- A local checks within 7 days
We visit, or call in Chinese, or read the operator’s notice. No armchair verification. Where a visit is impossible in the week, the listing is marked under review so nobody relies on the old figure.
- The listing changes, with the date and your credit
Prices, hours, closures and tags are updated with a “corrected [date], reported by [name]” line. If we were wrong, the page says so; the correction stays visible, we do not overwrite history.
- Disagree with the outcome?
Reply to the acknowledgement. Two independent reports outrank our single check and trigger a second visit.
What the report button is for, and what happens next
Every review, reply and photo has a report button. Choose the reason that fits best:
- Spam or advertising — links, contact details, promotions.
- Fake or undisclosed paid review — not a real visit, written by the business or a competitor, or a reward not disclosed.
- Halal claim is wrong or misleading — pork or alcohol seen, certificate expired, owner changed.
- Harassment, hate or threats — attacks on a person, a nationality or a religion.
- Privacy — an identifiable face, a phone number, a home address or other personal information.
- Copyright — a photo or text that is yours and was posted without permission.
- Wrong place or out of date — the review belongs to another listing, or the place has closed or moved.
- Something else — tell us in a line.
What happens next. Reports go into a moderation queue that a local reads daily. Privacy, threats and safety reports are acted on first: the content is hidden while we look, normally within 48 hours. All other reports are checked and resolved within 7 days — the same commitment as our corrections. A halal report puts the listing’s tag under review the same day. You receive the outcome if you were signed in or left an email; the person you reported is told the reason for any action, never who reported them.
What happens when the rules are broken
- A note or an edit request
For a first, minor slip — an undated review, a face in the background, a rating that scores the neighbourhood rather than the meal — we hide the part in question and ask you to fix it.
- Removal, with the reason
Content that breaks a rule is removed, and you are told which rule. Removing a review does not change the listing’s tag or our own verdict.
- A posting pause
Repeated breaches, or one serious one, pause your ability to post, reply and like for 30 days. You can still read and save.
- Permanent ban
For fake-review rings, undisclosed paid reviews after a warning, threats, hate speech, publishing someone’s personal information, or spam accounts, the ban is immediate and the account’s content is removed.
- Businesses
A business caught posting or buying fake reviews, or rewarding ratings, loses its reply rights and its claimed status, and the listing carries a dated note saying so. Its halal tag and our review are not affected by the penalty — only by evidence.
- Appeal
Reply to the notice or write via Contact within 14 days, saying why the decision was wrong. A local looks at it again and answers within 7 days; if new evidence changes the outcome, the content is restored with a note.
Replying and appealing
Owners who have claimed a listing can reply publicly once per review, under their business name. Replies follow the same rules — no attacks on the reviewer, no marketing copy, no claims about halal status beyond what the tag already says. To dispute a review as fake, contact us with details (date, table, bill); we check on site and publish the finding. Reviews are not removed for being negative, and a business cannot edit its review, score or tag. Sponsored placements, if any, are labelled and sit outside the ranked lists.
Rights and liability
By sending a review or photo you give NiceYiwu a non-exclusive right to publish it on this site and its social accounts with your credit; you keep the copyright and can ask for removal at any time. Do not send photos you do not own. Reviews are personal experiences, not guarantees: we work hard on the tags and the prices, but the kitchen you are standing in is the final word, and neither NiceYiwu nor a reviewer is liable for a meal, a room or a fare that turned out differently. Contact and data handling: Privacy & Disclosure.
Questions visitors ask
Can I post a review before launch?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: You can send a report through the contact page or WhatsApp. It is read by a local, checked like any other, and published when the review section opens, with your original date.
Who decides whether a restaurant is halal?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: We do, under the four-tier evidence rule on How We Review, and we carry the responsibility for it. Readers add evidence or raise doubts; a doubt puts the tag under review and triggers a check within 7 days.
Will a bad review be removed if the owner complains?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: No. Reviews are removed only for the reasons listed above (advertising, attacks, not visited, copied, duplicates). A disputed review is checked on site and the outcome published under it.
Can I review a restaurant where the owner gave me a free meal?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: Yes, if you say so in the first line of the review. Disclosed reviews are published with a label; undisclosed ones are removed when we find out.
Why is my review waiting for moderation?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: The first review from a new account is checked by a local before it appears, usually within 48 hours. Later reviews appear immediately and are checked afterwards.
How do I delete my account and my reviews?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: Ask through the contact page or WhatsApp from your account email; everything is deleted within 30 days, and you can ask for a copy of your data first. Details: Privacy & Disclosure.
Can I post a photo of a halal certificate?
Online community accounts and posting are not enabled. Planned policy: Please do — it is the most useful photo on the site. Make sure the issuer and the date are readable; we confirm them before certificate evidence is added to the listing with the issuer, scope and expiry date.