Traveling in China: How to Buy a Train Ticket

Okay, so you've found out what you need to know before going to China, and arrived. What are you going to do now? It's a huge country and getting from place to place can be a little difficult. Fortunately, one of the best ways to go is to ride the train. Learn how to buy tickets and go in style. The Chinese rail system is very efficient, but it can be a little confusing if you haven't experienced it before, especially if you don't speak Mandarin Chinese. There are several ways to get tickets, but for American and European travelers who are used to paying fares online and in advance, the system may seem frustrating. Several options are available for getting around.

First, Find Your Train

Although there isn't a normal system for buying train tickets online in China, train schedules are available online. http://www.chinatraintickets.net/ has a way of buying overpriced tickets in advance, but more valuably, it also has schedule information.

Write down the train number and destination you are interested in before going out to buy the ticket. Z and D numbers are night and day fast trains, respectively; T is second best, N and K are somewhat older and slower, and numbers with no letter code are the oldest and slowest trains.

Getting a Train Ticket at the Station

This is how the locals do it: tickets go on sale between two and twenty days ahead (usually five to ten; one of the problems of buying train tickets is the difficulty in finding out when they go on sale.) The best way to get a good seat or sleeper berth is to arrive at the station at that time. This can pose trouble for someone who is traveling through another town on that day, especially during holiday times such as the Chinese New Year (also called Spring Festival) but for travelers who are already in the city where they plan to board the train, going to the station is ideal.

However, this option requires a rudimentary understanding of some Mandarin Chinese words: The name of the desired destination, the words for different kinds of seats and sleeper berths, and an understanding of a few responses you might get.

A holdover from Communist ideals is the idea that seats don't have a "class" - there are just hard seats and soft seats, hard sleepers and soft sleepers. This translates to economy and first class in Western parlance.

A hard seat is yìng zuò (yeeng zwoh) and a soft seat is ruan zuò (rwan zwoh). These are abbreviated YZ and RZ. If you're traveling overnight on a budget, get a yìng wò (yeeng woh, YW), a hard sleeper, and if you want to sleep in style, shell out for a ruan wò (rwan woh, RW or soft sleeper). Hard sleepers are not bad. Hard seats, however, are usually quite crowded.

"How much?" is "duoshao qian", pronounced dwoh-shao chee-en.

The hard sleepers and hard seats fill up faster than the soft sleepers and soft seats, so be prepared with a little extra cash. A traveler who doesn't understand Chinese should bring pen and paper, so that answers to questions such as cost can be written down numerically. Stations usually have at least one employee who can speak some English, but that may not be very much English.

Buying Tickets through a Travel Agent

Agents will not, as a rule, have rail tickets any cheaper than the office at the station, but they may have a few reserved fares available after the station has already sold out. Try a travel agent when the person working at the station shakes their head and says "mei you" (don't have).

They may charge exorbitant rates, but I've met more than one traveler who's been extremely grateful for this service when there's nothing left at the station.

Buying Tickets Online

This is like buying through a travel agent: the sellers who offer train tickets for travel in China online take a pretty big premium, but it's a way to guarantee the trip you want. One site useful for this purpose is http://www.chinatripadvisor.com/, and another was mentioned earlier in this article. They usually charge up to twice as much as one would pay going to the station. Nonetheless, this can be a welcome way to secure the right ticket in advance.