Life in China Rails and infrastructureEveryday China
How to buy a China high-speed rail ticket on a passport
Passport verification, the staffed boarding lane, the refund and change fee tiers, and why two trains on one section can differ by 249 yuan.
Living page — numbers read from the sources on 2026-10-11, re-checked monthly.
A foreign passport buys a Chinese train ticket. Since 28 November 2023 the identity check can also be done online rather than at a station window (China Railway Group, 2023-11-30). Two things decide how smooth the trip is: your account’s verification status, and the lane you walk into. A passport is not among the documents that open the automatic gates (real-name ticketing FAQ, read 2026-10-11).
Can you buy it yourself?
Yes. What changes by channel is which document the railway accepts there.
| Where you buy | Foreigner-acceptable documents | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 12306 website, 12306 app, ticket hotline | foreign passport; foreign permanent-resident ID | regulations, art. 11 |
| Station ticket counter, ticket agency, or on board | foreign passport, foreign permanent-resident ID, foreigner’s exit-entry permit, seaman’s book, visa-application receipt, passport-loss report, embassy-issued temporary travel document | regulations, art. 11; order no. 39, art. 12 |
| Self-service ticket machine in a station | foreign permanent-resident ID only | regulations, art. 11; order no. 39, art. 13 |
Both lists are in the current regulations, in force 2026-06-01, and in the transport ministry’s real-name ticketing order, in force 2023-01-01 (regulations; gazette, read 2026-10-11).
The English site, www.12306.cn/en, accepts only valid foreign passports; other documents mean the Chinese version (English FAQ, q9, read 2026-10-11). Registration there asks for nationality, name, passport number and expiry, date of birth, gender, username, password and an email address — no phone number (registration page, read 2026-10-11). An email-registered account must be activated through it within 24 hours, against 15 minutes for a mainland mobile number, and an account that fails activation cannot buy tickets (MTR FAQ, read 2026-10-11). And buy from 12306 itself: it calls itself the only official online channel, has never authorised a third party to sell or handle tickets, and says the payee should be China Railway Network Co. (announcement, 2024-12-11).
Verify the passport once, then buy
The announcement of 28 November 2023 gives three routes (China Railway Group, 2023-11-30): give 12306 your name, nationality and document number for an automatic check; upload a photo of the passport data page for manual review; or use a station counter.
Until the status clears, nothing can be bought online. 12306 lists three states — 已通过 (verified), 待核验 (in the process), 未通过 (checked and failed) — and says the last two cannot buy tickets (verification and name rules, read 2026-10-11). The English site shows “verified” and “ready to be verified” (English FAQ, q5).
Names follow 12306’s rules for foreign passports: Latin letters only; one space between name groups; up to 64 characters, anything past 64 not entered; for hyphens, apostrophes and commas follow the machine-readable zone, where < and << become spaces; drop Mr or Miss; leave out a bracketed second name (entry rules, updated 2026-07-01; registration rules, read 2026-10-11). A name cannot be changed after purchase: for a wrong name or number the instruction is to refund and buy again, paying the refund fee (ticketing FAQ, q10–11, read 2026-10-11).
The clock: 15 days, station by station
Tickets go on sale 15 days ahead including the day of travel, and each station has its own release time (People’s Daily, 2025-01-13); the railway’s platform notice says the same (12306, 2024-12-11). The release-time query warns its results are for reference, because stations can move both the release and the stop-sale times (release times, read 2026-10-11).
| Service | Hours | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Online sales and changes | 05:00 to 01:00; 05:00 to 23:30 on Tuesdays | English FAQ, q8 |
| Refunds | round the clock | MTR FAQ |
One document buys one ticket for the same date and train, except overnight high-speed sleepers; three cancelled orders in a day end online buying for that day (ticketing FAQ, q5–q6, read 2026-10-11). Online payment takes Chinese or foreign bank cards and mobile payment apps; a counter also takes cash (MOFCOM guide, 2025 edition, read 2026-10-11).
At the station: which lane
The self-service lanes read Chinese resident IDs, the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residence permits, the foreign permanent-resident ID, and the two mainland travel permits. Everyone else boards through the staffed channel with the original document (real-name FAQ; boarding FAQ, read 2026-10-11). Stations must keep a staffed lane for documents that cannot be read automatically (order no. 39, art. 18).
No paper ticket is needed on most routes: the electronic record is the contract, and the itinerary sheet is not a boarding voucher (regulations, art. 13, in force 2026-06-01; English FAQ, q10–11). One 12306 page read the same day disagrees, still listing a purchase made with any document other than a Chinese resident ID among the cases needing a paper ticket before boarding (ticket exchange FAQ, read 2026-10-11).
When a train is sold out, the official queue is the waitlist (候补), a Chinese-version feature open only to accounts that passed in-app facial verification or hold an activated frequent-traveller membership (MTR FAQ, read 2026-10-11). One account may hold six pending orders, three dates and up to 60 train-and-date combinations (People’s Daily, 2025-01-13).
Change and refund: the two tables
Refund fee, counting back from departure:
| Time before departure | Fee |
|---|---|
| 8 days or more | none |
| 48 hours to under 8 days | 5% of the fare |
| 24 to under 48 hours | 10% |
| under 24 hours | 20% |
Change fee, by when you change and which date you move to:
| When you change | Moving to | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| 48 hours or more before departure | any train in the presale window | none |
| under 48 hours before departure | the same date or earlier | none |
| 24 to 48 hours before departure | a later date | 5% of the lower of the two fares |
| under 24 hours before departure | a later date | 15% of the lower fare |
| after departure, before 24:00 that day | another train that day | none |
| after departure, before 24:00 that day | the next day or later | 40% of the lower fare |
Refund tiers: purchase notes, 2023-11-14 and English FAQ, q11, read 2026-10-11. Change tiers: announcement of 2024-01-11, in force 2024-01-15 and regulations, art. 28, in force 2026-06-01.
Four details:
- The refund fee has a 2 yuan floor and rounds to the nearest half yuan, 0.25 down and 0.75 up (English FAQ, q11).
- One change per ticket; nothing is refunded once the train has left the ticket’s origin station, including a ticket changed after departure (regulations, arts. 28 and 46).
- Online change and refund close 25 minutes before departure at the ticket’s departure station; inside that window it is a counter job, and cash tickets are counter-only either way (change and refund FAQ; regulations, arts. 29 and 47, read 2026-10-11).
- Change to a train 8 or more days away, then refund it more than 8 days before departure, and 5% is still charged; a changed ticket travelling in the Spring Festival period moves to the under-24-hours rate (purchase notes, 2023-11-14).
When things go wrong
Missed it. Free change to another train that day until 24:00; a ticket changed after departure cannot be refunded (arts. 28, 46).
Late train. Refund at the departure station before the train actually leaves and the full fare returns, no fee (art. 51).
Wrong train, or off at the wrong stop. Tell staff: the conductor writes a transport record and the station puts you on the nearest train back to your ticket’s arrival station or origin, free; since 2026-06-01, with your agreement, that can be a same-city station instead. Nothing happens once you leave the station, and riding on to your original destination means paying the difference when that fare is higher and getting nothing back when it is lower (art. 37).
Past your stop. Ask the conductor before the ticket’s arrival station. With capacity the railway sells you the extra section; without it the conductor may require you to get off (art. 34).
Lost passport. The regulations send you to the document’s issuing authority for a temporary certificate. Lost on the train or before exit, buy a replacement ticket, then reclaim within 30 days with that certificate and the new ticket (art. 39). The app-based electronic temporary travel ID is issued against a Chinese resident ID; the paper version comes from the station’s public-security office (real-name FAQ, q4).
What the ticket costs, and why one section has several prices
Seat classes are named in the regulations: 二等座 second class, 一等座 first class, 特等座 premium, 商务座 business (art. 3). Each journey has a published fare (公布票价), the cap, and an executed fare (执行票价), what you pay; later adjustments are neither charged nor refunded on tickets already sold (art. 8, in force 2026-06-01). High-speed fares are not in the central price catalogue, whose rail entry is hard-seat and hard-sleeper fares on centrally managed lines, and whose note excludes 动车组列车 (NDRC order 31, in force 2020-05-01).
One operator published its whole fare table when it moved to flexible pricing. One line, one direction:
| Section | Second | First | Premium | Business |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beijing South–Shanghai Hongqiao | 662 | 1,060 | 1,192 | 2,318 |
| Beijing South–Jinan West | 223 | 357 | 402 | 782 |
| Shanghai Hongqiao–Nanjing South | 162 | 260 | 292 | 568 |
| Beijing South–Tianjin South | 67 | 107 | 121 | 235 |
| Shanghai Hongqiao–Suzhou North | 45 | 71 | 80 | 156 |
Published fares, Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, 2020-10-24, in force 2020-12-23. No class ratios are printed, so I measured them off the table: across 276 station pairs the medians are 1.6 for first class, 1.8 for premium and 3.5 for business (my arithmetic). The same announcement caps the line at 9.04折 and floors it at 7.52折 of the published fare — for the full 662 yuan run, 598 and 498 yuan.
Four more sections took the same pricing on 2024-06-15: published fares up about 19–20%, cheapest tickets at 5.5折 of the published fare, 34% below the old flat price (China Railway Group, 2024-06-01). The operator gave reporters two examples:
| Section | Cheapest second class | Undiscounted second class | Old price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wuhan–Guangzhou South | 304 | 553 | 463.5 |
| Shanghai Hongqiao–Changsha South | 315 | not stated | not stated |
Sources: People’s Daily interview with the operating companies, 2024-05-07; Xinhua interview with the railway’s passenger department, 2024-06-01. The first pair is the railway’s own illustration: two trains there both cost 463.5 yuan before the change, taking 3 hours 47 minutes and 4 hours 50 minutes; afterwards the faster costs 553 yuan, 19% more, the slower 304 yuan, 34% less — 249 yuan apart. Both floors are 5.5折 of the published fare by construction: 304 ÷ 0.55 = 552.7 and 315 ÷ 0.55 = 572.7, so the second section’s published fare is about 573 yuan (my arithmetic). Floors are set per period: for the 2026 Spring Festival the deepest discount on 动车组 trains was described as 2折, a fifth of the reference fare (CCTV via Xinhua, 2026-01-31).
How I checked this
Primary sources only: the railway’s passenger transport regulations as published on 12306, in the version in force since 2026-06-01 rather than the one most travel writing still quotes; 12306’s FAQ pages and its purchase notes of 2023-11-14; four 12306 announcements (2019-07-26, 2020-10-24, 2024-01-11, 2024-12-11); the 2020 Beijing–Shanghai fare table; the central price catalogue and the transport ministry’s order in the State Council gazette; the 2025 MOFCOM guide; and the cross-border operator’s FAQ. Three state-media items carry numbers absent from the railway’s own pages — the 15-day presale, the 304 and 315 yuan floors, and the Spring Festival discount depth — so each is named where it appears. All pages were read on 2026-10-11.
Paper reimbursement receipts were replaced by railway electronic invoices from 2025-10-01, a change the 2026 rules absorb; some older 12306 pages still describe the paper receipt (Science and Technology Daily, 2026-05-29, read 2026-10-11).
What I could not check
- Whether a particular station’s gate reads a passport. 12306’s lists put passports in the staffed channel; I cannot test a gate.
- The turnaround for an uploaded passport photo. Not stated.
- The payment deadline. A state-media report in January 2026 says 30 minutes; 12306 gives no length.
- The service fee at a ticket agency. A 5 yuan figure circulates in guides; no current rate card found.
- Whether a station’s public-security office issues a temporary travel ID to a foreign passport holder with an embassy letter rather than sending them to the issuing authority.
- Whether a verified foreign-passport account can pass the in-app facial check the cross-border operator ties to waitlist tickets.
- Whether an issued electronic invoice blocks an online refund or change. The old trigger was a printed receipt; the 2026 rules name no replacement.
- Which paper-ticket rule your station follows. Two 12306 pages read the same day disagree.