Getting around China by high-speed rail

High-speed rail is the spine of any sensible China route, and the booking channel is China Railway’s own 12306 site and app rather than a reseller. Your passport is the ticket: you register the number, buy the e-ticket, and board by scanning the physical passport at the gate, so the document you booked with has to be the one in your pocket. The normal presale window is fifteen days including the day of departure, though the railway adjusts it, and popular corridors around weekends and holidays do sell out. Use the official waitlist rather than paying an agent a markup to do the same thing.

Second class is the default and it is comfortable — a reclining seat with a tray table, power, and luggage racks that fit a large case. Reckon on roughly ¥550 for Beijing to Xi’an in about four and a half hours, ¥550 to ¥600 for Beijing to Shanghai in four and a half to six, and about ¥150 for Chengdu to Chongqing in ninety minutes. First class buys width rather than speed. Fly only for the legs rail does badly: Chengdu or Chongqing to Guilin, or anything crossing the country diagonally, where the train becomes an overnight and the plane is two hours.

The recurring mistake is the station suffix. Beijing has South, West and Fengtai; Shanghai has Hongqiao and Shanghai station; Chengdu, Xi’an and Chongqing all have more than one, and they are not near each other. Check the Chinese station name against your hotel before you book either, and leave real slack when a same-day connection changes stations. In cities, the metro is cheap, signed in English in the big ones and easiest paid through the transport code inside Alipay or WeChat; ride-hailing through Didi covers the rest and removes the language problem at the kerb. Long-distance buses exist but are a fallback, not a plan.

Two things move rail from an annoyance to a pleasure. Book the leg before you need it — the moment your date opens, not the night before — and check the national holiday calendar first, because Spring Festival, May Day and the National Day week produce demand no amount of money fixes. If your dates overlap one of those, either book everything weeks ahead or reshape the route to sit still through it.