China travel
- China train
- train tickets fare
- at the train station
- train reservations
- train classes
- food & drinks
- train Beijing <-> Shanghai
China has the busiest railway network in the world. According Wikipedia, China has 24% of all global railway traffic. The Chinese network is covering a total length of 78,000 kilometres. Only the USA and Russia have larger networks.
Most convenient is that the hotel book a train ticket for you. They will charge you money for this service. How much depends of the hotel. Likely between 20-100 Yuan per ticket. We ordered one time in our hotel in Hangzhou train tickets and they charged us 40 Yuan per ticket. If you go to the train station yourself you will have the cheapest price. A third option is to look for one of the train ticket agencies in the city. These offices ask a small surcharge (5 Yuan) but probably they are not easy to find or recognize. Children in mainland China under 1.10m travel free, children between 1.10-1.40 pay half fare and children over 1.40m pay the full fare.
Tickets at the train station are sold in the ticket office. The ticket office is most times separated from the station building with its waiting rooms and platforms. At the train station you will see English signs to the ticket office. Inside the ticket office is sometimes a special ticket window for foreigners. Summer 2009 we traveled through China but only in Shanghai we saw clearly this counter for foreigners. In Beijing the foreigners counter seems to be in the main building near the softseat waiting room. If you don't see this foreigner counter with English signs go to the information desk. (it is written in English) Good chance that the people behind the information desk don't speak English but they can point you which counter you have to queue for buying a ticket. The queues are sometimes long but you don't have to wait very long. We didn't need to show our passports to buy tickets. I allways wrote down the destination, class and a global time of departure. Chinese airports and metro stations have nowadays lots of signs in English which make them quite easy to use. However railway stations in China didn't improve much in guiding foreign tourists.
All passengers who enter the station building have to put their luggage through scanning machines just like the airport. People who buy a softseat/softsleeper ticket and foreigners are allowed to stay in the firstclass waitingroom. The waitingroom for the secondclass is crowded and hot in summer. The passengers have to wait in the waitingroom till their train number on the electric information board is green. When its green the passengers can go to the platform from where the train is leaving. On the platform are the numbers of the train carriages written on the ground. Do not throw your train ticket away after boarding the train: you have to show it when you exit the train station.
It is possible to make train reservations in China 4 till 20 days in advance. If you book your train tickets 2-3 days days before you leave it should be okay. If it is a short busy connection with dozens of trains every day (like Hongkong-Shenzhen, Shenzhen-Guangzhou or Shanghai-Suzhou) you can buy tickets at the train station and leave instantly. Exceptions are Chinese holidays and special events like the Olympic Games. In those cases make a reservation as soon as possible. During our trip through China in summer 2009 we bought our train tickets at the local railway stations without many problems. We could not allways buy the train tickets we wanted. For example: tickets for the first class soft seat Nanjing-Beijing were not available for the other day so we decided to take the second class soft seat. Tickets for the night train Beijing - Qingdao (popular beach resort) were sold out and not available within 48hours so we took the plane.
There are 4 different classes in the Chinese trains:
- hard seat: cheapest fare but crowded
- soft seat: comfortable
- hard sleeper: 2x3 beds: 66 beds in carriage
- soft sleeper: 2x2 beds
The softsleeper has 4 beds in a closed compartment. Two beds are used as couch in the day: the other two are folding beds. The hardsleeper is not closed and you will have contact with the other passengers in the carriage.
Sheets, pillows and blankets will be provided.
Shanghai Railway Station - the ticket office
In many trains is a dining car where you can eat a hot meal or buy some snacks and drinks. Best is to take some food, drink and vegetables with you. Small foam boxes with a basic hot meal (rice/noodles) are sometimes sold in the train. Hot water is free available. Don't forget either your own cup/tea/coffee/noodles/fork/spoon/chopsticks and toiletpaper.
There are 10 trains daily between Beijing and Shanghai. Distance is 1460km. Fastest and most expensive are the highspeed bullet trains. The only day train departs 11.00 in Beijing and arrives 10 hours later in Shanghai at 21.00. We took this train from Nanjing to Beijing. Usual speed is between 160-210 km/hour. The train make stops in several other larger cities such as Suzhou and Nanjing. At the end of the journey (near Beijing South Station) the speed was 249km/hour. In 2013 the travel time of this train will be reduced from 10 till only 5 hours.
The other 9 trains depart in the evening in Beijing between 19.30 - 20.30 and arrive between 7.00-9.20 in Shanghai. Comfortable trains are the Z-trains. Fare is ¥500 for a softsleeper bed.
The T-trains have Deluxe Softsleeper 2-person rooms with private toilet for ¥900 per person. Cheapest ticket is the hardseat in the 1461-train with a journey of 23 hours.
Chongqing Railway Station - inside the ticket office (August 2009)
Chongqing Railway Station - waitingroom second class
- China Tibet train
- Beijing - China distances
- Beijing train stations
- Beijing Railway Station . Downtown and close to Tiananmen Square. Trains to Harbin, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Moscow. Connected by metro/underground, line 2.
- West Train Station Trains to Chengdu, Guilin, Hong Kong, Lhasa, Xian.
- Beijing South Station (Tianjin high speed train, the daytime bullet train from Shanghai)
- Beijing Airport No train station but a metro line to Beijing downtown. Fare is ¥25.
- Shanghai train stations
- Shanghai Railway Station. Trains to Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Kowloon, Qingdao, Xian. Metro 1,3 and 4.
- Shanghai South Railway Station. Trains to Hangzhou, Jiashan, Jinshan and Nanchang. Metro 1 and 3.
- Shanghai West Railway Station. Trains to Hangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo and Yantai.
- Pudong International Airport Maglev High-Speed Train to Shanghai Pudong. 30km in 7 minutes. Fare is ¥50.
- pictures train stations in China
Shanghai Railway Station Ticket Office (August 2009)
'the english speaking counter'
The Tibet China train opened in July 2006 and is the highest railway in the world. Check the link for more information.
- Beijing - Chengdu (2200km - 26/31hrs)
- Beijing - Fuzhou (2200km - 19/33hrs) - Beijing - Guangzhou (2300km - 20/22hrs)
- Beijing - Guilin (2150km - 23/27hrs)
- Beijing - Harbin (1300km - 8/11hrs)
- Beijing - Lhasa ( 4000km - 47hrs)
- Beijing - Shanghai (1460km - 11/23hrs)
- Beijing - Tianjin (135km - 30min)
- Beijing - Xian (1200km - 11/13hrs)
Chongqing Railway Station - entrance of the station
Chongqing - Chengdu bullet train
This train took us comfortable to Chengdu Railway Station. Firstclass tickets were not available but this didn't matter. Secondclass softseat tickets are mosttimes okay. Compared with the firstclass softseats: the secondclass softseat carriage has 2+3 seats next to eachother. There is less space for the legs. Passengers also have more luggage and in generally it is more noisy in the carriage than in the firstclass. Travel time to Chengdu was less than 4 hours. Fare was about 95 Yuan. The speed was not higher than 210km/hour. China is working on a special highspeed train network.
- Shenzhen train station
- Beijing airport express
- Beijing central station
- Shanghai railway station
- Guangzhou East Railway Station
- Chengdu Railway Station
contact us
Chinatrains.com 2009