How do I take a high-speed train in China with a foreign passport?

Start with Railway 12306. Enter your name and passport details as they appear on the document. The official guide offers three identity-check routes: automatic verification online, a passport-photo upload for manual review, or a station ticket office with the original passport. Do this before the day you travel, so a pending check does not become a station errand.

The passport used to buy the ticket is the one to carry. For an electronic ticket, the railway says to show that document when entering, leaving and boarding; the printed itinerary sheet and reimbursement receipt are not tickets. Railway guidance sends passengers using documents other than its listed machine-readable cards through a staffed identity and ticket lane. Follow the lane staff point you to, rather than treating a printed order as your ticket.

At the station, your bag and belongings go through security. Look at the departure display for your waiting room, gate and platform; the railway says announcements and staff also give those details. Ticket checks stop before departure, and stations post the cutoff. If you have another train, read the departure station and train number on that booking, then check its gate on the display. Give yourself room for the walk and any queue instead of guessing a universal arrival time.

As of September 30, 2026, Railway 12306 sets the presale window at 15 days, including the sale day. Check its announcements when planning a holiday trip: the railway says it announces any change to that window in advance.

A ticket can be changed once if another suitable train has space. Under the current 12306 rules, changing at least 48 hours before departure to a train within the presale window is free. Inside 48 hours, moving to a train on or before the original travel date is free; moving to a later date in the window carries a fee. After departure, you can still change the ticket before midnight on the original travel date: another train that day is free, while a later date carries a fee.

If you need to cancel instead, 12306 grades refund fees by the time left before departure; read the amount for your order before confirming. The railway does not give one arrival time for every station. Stations post when ticket checks stop, so look up your station's cutoff and allow for security and the staffed document lane.

Booking through Trip.com instead of 12306 also works, by Trip.com's own account: it sells China train tickets on a foreign passport, issues the same paperless e-ticket, and you board by showing the passport you booked with; if the gate won't read it, staff check you through. It also takes 'advance reservations' before the 15-day window and buys the moment sales open. The refund fees are the railway's, not Trip.com's, so the 12306 schedule above still applies.

If the train you want is sold out, join the 12306 waitlist before giving up. When a search shows no seats left, the seat class shows a 'waitlist' (候补) option; tap it to place a waitlist order. You prepay the highest fare in the order. If a ticket comes through, any difference is refunded automatically; an order that never fills, or that you cancel, is refunded in full to the payment method you used. One order can cover up to 3 travel dates and no more than 60 train-and-date combinations, and you can hold up to 6 orders at once. Tick 'accept added trains' (接受新增列车) so an extra train the railway adds can fill your order too.

You set each order's cutoff yourself, no later than 20 minutes before departure. The system keeps trying around the clock, so a ticket can come through in the small hours; consider choosing a cutoff for a time you'll be awake to check your phone. Seats freed by refunds and changes, extra carriages and added trains go first to matching waitlisted orders, in the order they became active after prepayment. The railway says tickets released by refunds and changes may be more numerous 8 days, 48 hours and 24 hours before departure, when its fee steps change. Before applying for the waitlist, 12306 requires identity-consistency verification; follow its prompts for your passport. The 12306 English site lists purchase, change, refund and change of destination among its services, not the waitlist, so you may need the Chinese interface for this. Except on high-speed sleeper trains, one ID can hold only one ticket on the same train on the same day; for a backup while you wait, choose a different train. Trip.com runs its own waitlist, by its own account: it keeps trying until 2 hours before departure and refunds in full if it fails.