Chinese Rail Transport Appreciation & News
- Thread starter cookiez
- Start date
This is simply an appreciation post for the HSR network. Back after spending over a month in China with a huge amount of travelling between cities. Each time, the ride was smooth and the timeliness was exceptional. It's thoroughly depressing to come back to the utter abomination that is the British rail network lol
The only real room for improvement wrt passenger experience might be to locate the major stations closer to the CBDs as you often still spend a lot of time on the metro to get to anywhere important. But that's probably a challenge when factoring in the cost of real estate and the typical designed capacity of the stations so it's understandable why things are the way they are
The only real room for improvement wrt passenger experience might be to locate the major stations closer to the CBDs as you often still spend a lot of time on the metro to get to anywhere important. But that's probably a challenge when factoring in the cost of real estate and the typical designed capacity of the stations so it's understandable why things are the way they are
How was it getting tickets? From what I understand it isn’t easy being a foreigner, you need your passport and a separate line at the station, and you can’t use ticket machines. Have things changed?
You can book online via 12306 these days, but you still need to enter your passport details when making your account.
You might need to go to the manual line instead of the automated lines at the gate before seating but very few people use that line so it's just as fast. Might just be an issue with my account and not something 99PLA experienced.
You need to bring your passport but it's really the same as natives bringing their Chinese citizenship card. It just works as your train ticket.
Just to add;
Past the 3rd ticket (or was it 5th - can't recall) purchased on 12306, you will need to bring your passport to a counter to have it verified and linked to your account to continue buying tickets online.
So far, boarding via the manual/manned gate still required, haven't had any success on the auto gates but I can agree that the manual line still moves very fast regardless.
You're supposed to have your passport with you at all times anyway, so it's a small hassle.
China HSR is a very pleasant experience indeed.
- Helps that the biz class tickets are by international standards very cheap.
- The 红帽 （red hat/jacket porter) service makes it even more painless. Sadly, not all stations have this service.
The only time I gotten the automatic gates to work with a foreign passport is at HK West Kowloon.
Yea, think it was past the 5th ticket for me.
Another thing is you can order food on the train, but only for some stations and only if you are using the Chinese language. If you're using the 12306 app, you can switch languages in it and it'll bring up all those functionality. You'll need to know how to read Chinese or use an OCR translator.
You order on through 12306 (has to be ordered at least 30? minutes before arrival; can be days in advance) and the restaurant will deliver to the train at that station. The train staff will then take the food to your seat.
Most natives avoid this though because they're usually not on it for a long time and it's expensive (for natives). I think it runs about 50-70 RMB for a meal. That's $7-10 USD.
Last edited: