At the point where a given train starts, train tickets can usually be bought up to five days in advance. After the point where a given train starts, a small number of tickets might be reserved for purchase in larger towns along the route of travel. Usually these are the "standing" class. If you want to get a seat assignment (zuowei) or a sleeper (wopu), then find the train conductor and he will tell you if there is availability. The biggest demand is for hard seats and hard sleepers, so it' is a good idea to ask a local friend to buy hard seat tickets as the sellers are not always willing to sell them to foreigners although this is rapidly changing.
Do not expect English-speaking staff at station cash desks, even in big cities. And if the cashier finds some English-speaking colleague, don't expect that he can work with the reservation system. If you don't speak Chinese, write the departure and destination station, date and time of departure, train number and required class on paper. You can write the station name in pinyin, as the cashier enters them in the same way to the reservation system. Beware that many cities have different stations for normal trains and high-speed trains. High-speed station names usually consist of city name and cardinal direction (for example Héngyángdōng "Hengyang East")
During busy seasons tickets sell out rapidly at train stations. It may be better to get tickets in advance through an agent. In cities like Beijing there are also agents who sell train tickets in the normal time frame with a nominal markup (there is an agent across from Tian'anmen Square). The convenience of avoiding a trip to the train station and waiting in the queue is well worth the small increase in cost. Travel agencies will accept money and bookings for train tickets in advance but no one can guarantee your ticket until the station releases them onto the market, at which point your agency will go and buy the ticket they had previously "guaranteed" you. This is true anywhere in China.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about China
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China Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
