China Travel Forum

[Harold]

Has anyone managed to reserve/purchase tickets for train journeys in China online? How does the system work? Any advice would be appreciated.

[James]

You can reserve tickets on-line for departures from Beijing, for instance, but only from 12 days ahead (last time I looked), and you'll need both to be able to read Chinese and to enter Chinese in your computer. The tickets have to be picked up fairly shortly after booking, too, so can't be booked until the moment you leave home, if you are overseas. Travel agency sites offering tickets on a very limited choice of routes are charging as much as 70% over the odds, and should be avoided.
In short, just deal with it when you're there. If you don't want to go to the station yourself, simply pay an agent Y20 or so to sort it out for you. If you can find an in-town ticket office with a terminal on the railway system (usually marked on city maps with the railways logo) you can buy for only Y5 commission per ticket. Tickets are generally available over the counter only a very few days ahead, and can be booked by phone just a few days in advance of that, but again you'll need Mandarin for that.
Planning your journey in China in great detail may work out, but in general is not such a good idea. Just book as you go.