Start with the official option: 12306
Photo: Shwangtianyuan / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
A foreign passport can buy a Chinese train ticket. The railway sells that ticket itself, on 12306, at a station counter, and through channels it authorizes. If the passenger on the booking matches the document you will carry, the rest of the purchase is the station, the train, and a seat that is actually for sale.
12306.cn is the railway’s own website. The English FAQ is explicit that the railway will not handle a ticketing problem that happened on some other site. That is the reason to start here when you can. The inventory is the railway’s. A change or a refund on a 12306 booking stays on the railway’s own rules. A simple ticket does not need a second company between you and the seat.
Some travelers will still want a familiar payment page or someone to talk to in their own language. That tradeoff is later on this page. A third party does not add trains.
The English site sells, changes, and refunds tickets, and it can change a destination where that service applies. The current pages do not publish one set of service hours. The English FAQ and homepage describe one schedule. The English ticket-search page describes another. The Chinese booking page describes a third. If you are booking late at night, follow the service notice on the screen you are using. Those hours are when that interface is open. They are not the moment a particular station releases a particular date.
A date outside the presale window will not show a seat. The notice 12306 still publishes sets that window at 15 days, including the day of travel. The window is not a clock. When a given station starts selling a given date, look it up on the sale-time query. That page says the result is a reference: the station may change the start and the stop, and the station announcement is the one that controls. Do not treat midnight, or any other single hour, as the release time for the whole country.
Set up your account before you need the ticket
The English registration page currently accepts only a foreign passport. Nationality, name, passport number, expiry, date of birth, and sex are on that form, with a username, a password, and an email for notices. The form does not ask for a Chinese mobile number.
The Chinese site and the 12306 app are also official channels, and the railway’s ticketing rules let those channels sell against a wider set of documents, including a foreign passport. The English page is the one that states the passport-only limit.
Registering is not the same step as passing identity verification, and the official pages do not describe that check as one status.
The current passport-verification page says a ticket can be bought after the document information has been uploaded and identity verification has passed. Where that check is a manual review of the photos, the page currently says the review takes 3 to 5 working days. That figure is the review time on that page. It is not a claim that every account waits five days, and it is not a claim that a purchase is open while the review is still running.
The English FAQ uses different words. It says a registered user whose identity is verified, or ready to be verified, can buy, including for another passenger once that passenger is in the same state. It also describes a foreign-passport passenger still marked to be verified: a ticket can be bought, and a paper ticket can be collected only after a station counter moves the status to ready to be verified. Those are the FAQ’s statuses. They are not the same sentence as the passport-verification page.
The railway’s identity-check notice is a third page. A record that is pending or has failed cannot be used to buy. The original document can be taken to a station ticket window. A foreign-passport holder can also upload photos on 12306. A name the site cannot store, because it is too long or uses a character the form will not take, is a window case. The window then asks for the last four digits of a registered mobile number or the first three characters of the registered email.
These pages are all current, and they do not collapse into one timeline. If this trip depends on 12306, finish the account and the identity check that account asks for before the day you need the seat. That is preparation, not a railway rule that every review takes the maximum number of days.
Add the passenger exactly as the passport shows
The booking belongs to the person named on it. The document you type is the document the station will ask to see. A shortened name, or a passport you are not carrying, is how a paid order becomes unusable at the gate.
The English registration page includes a guide for how a passport name is entered. The guide tells you to use the name in the machine-readable line at the bottom of the passport, and to replace each “<” and “<<” with a space. A second name or a former name sitting in parentheses is not entered. Spaces that belong in the name stay. Do not invent a shorter version because the box looks small. If your passport layout does not match the first example, use the example on that page that matches it.
The same notice that covers identity status says a foreign passport is entered as the English name, in name order, with a space between surname and given names and with any space that is already inside either part. Once a record has passed, the name, document type, document number, and nationality are locked. Getting them right is cheaper than correcting them later.
You can buy for someone else. On the English site, add that person under My Passengers and enter the name, the document type, and the document number accurately. The FAQ allows the purchase when that passenger’s identity is verified or ready to be verified. At a station counter, the FAQ allows a purchase for someone else with the original or a copy of that passenger’s valid identity document.
A foreign-passport account is not a way to add every companion document. The identity-check notice says that account can add another foreign passport, and some Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Chinese passport documents. It cannot add a Chinese resident identity card, a residence permit, or a foreign permanent-resident identity card. One identity document can hold only one ticket for the same train on the same date. This page is not a group-booking manual. Two people means two passenger records that each match a document you can produce.
Search for the right train and the right station
Search the trip, not the two city names. Beijing is not one railway station. Beijing Railway Station, Beijing South, and Beijing West are three buildings. Shanghai Railway Station and Shanghai Hongqiao are two more. A ticket from Beijing South does not leave from whichever Beijing station is closest to the hotel.
On the result, read the departure station, the arrival station, the departure time, the arrival time, the journey time, the train code, and whether a seat is still for sale. 北京南 and 北京西 are not interchangeable, and neither are 上海站 and 上海虹桥. Save the Chinese names. A map search for “Beijing station” is how people arrive at the wrong building with a correct ticket.
What the station looks like once you are there, from the door to the gate, is in China high-speed rail. This page stops at the booking. The error it is trying to prevent is buying the wrong pair of stations in the first place.
Choose the train and seat you actually need
The results are a list of specific trains. Two rows can share a city pair and still be a different journey: a different station, a different time of day, a much longer ride. The code on the row is part of that choice. What the letters mean for the ride, and which seat class is enough for an ordinary daytime trip, is on the high-speed rail page. Here, click the row whose stations and times are the trip you meant, and whose seat is still offered.
Seat classes on that row are the inventory for that train. If business class is not on the row, it is not on that train. If the class you wanted is gone and another class on the same train is still for sale, that is still the same journey. A seat on a train from a different station is not a substitute. It is a different meeting point.
Pay for the ticket
A seat on 12306 is held only inside the payment time the site shows on that order. If the payment is late, the order is cancelled and the seat goes back. The English order page states that, and it also states that you cannot buy another ticket until you pay this one or cancel it. The published payment guide says the same thing without a single national countdown. Pay inside the time on the screen in front of you.
That guide groups the methods as online banking and UnionPay, where those channels apply, plus Alipay and WeChat Pay. One order uses one of them, for the whole amount.
An online order cannot be taken to a station window to pay. The payment guide says window payment of a 12306 hold is not supported. If the payment on the screen is not one you can finish, cancel the hold inside the time shown and buy another way. Leaving it unpaid only ties up the seat until the site releases it.
A foreign bank card that works inside Alipay is Alipay’s payment, not proof that 12306 will charge that card by itself. The payment guide does not list international card networks as their own method. Whether a given card will pass is a question for the checkout you are looking at, and for the bank that issued it. Setting up Alipay or WeChat Pay, if that is the method you will actually use, is covered in how to pay in China. Do not assume the wallet and the railway checkout are the same acceptance.
If a refund is later due on an online payment, the English FAQ says it goes back to the original payment method, on that method’s own timing. The customer line on the site is 12306.
What if the train you want is sold out?
A sold-out train does not grow a seat because you ask again. Refreshing the page is not a method. Neither is a service that claims it can grab railway inventory the railway is not selling.
12306 does have an official waitlist. The waitlist page says any registered user may apply, and that an identity-consistency check is required first. The English FAQ does not describe this function. If those screens do not offer it, the documented path is the waitlist page, not a button you have to guess at.
The waitlist is a prepaid queue, not a promise. You pay the highest fare among the combinations you submit, with a sleeper priced at the lower berth. If a matching seat appears, the system issues a paid order and returns any difference. If you cancel, or the deadline passes with no seat, the prepayment is returned in full. You can set the deadline, and you can change that deadline later. It cannot be later than 20 minutes before departure. Other details of the request cannot be edited after it is in force. Cancel it and submit another if the trip itself has changed. The result that counts is the order status inside 12306.
Submit a waitlist only for a trip you will actually take. It does not clear because you need it to. If it is not available on the account you have, or you do not want money sitting on a maybe, change the decision: another departure time, another station that is still the right meeting point, another date, or a flight when the city pair justifies one. Whether this route should leave the railway at all is in getting around China. A ticket from the wrong station, bought because that station still had seats, is a different journey.
When a third-party booking service makes sense
A booking service can be the practical counter when 12306 is not. The usual reasons are ordinary: the page is in a language you already use, someone answers in that language, the payment is one your card already completes, or the train sits inside a larger booking you are already making.
A third-party service should not be assumed to have extra railway capacity simply because 12306 shows no availability. Read what you are buying before you pay: a confirmed ticket, a request that still has to be booked, a waitlist, or a different product. A service fee is their fee, not part of the railway fare. A change or a refund may have to go through them, on their clock, even when the railway would have done it on 12306. Support quality is not uniform. Before you pay, know whether the booking sits in your 12306 account or only in theirs.
The railway’s own warning is narrow and worth keeping: it will not sort out a ticketing problem that occurred on another website. Use a service you can contact. Do not use one that asks you to hand over a 12306 password, and do not use one that tells you to keep refreshing until a seat appears.
Buying a ticket at the railway station
A station ticket counter is an official channel, listed in the same FAQ as 12306. It is the human route when the account, the identity check, or the payment cannot be finished online. It is not a consolation prize, and it is not a back door into a train that has already sold out. The counter sells what is still for sale.
The document list at the window is wider than the English website. Alongside a foreign passport, the railway’s ticketing rules include a foreign permanent-resident identity card, a foreign exit-entry permit, and a small set of other papers issued for travel. Bring the original you expect to ride with. If you are buying for another person, the English FAQ says the counter takes that passenger’s valid identity document in original or in copy.
Automatic machines are a narrower list. The same rules include Chinese identity cards, Chinese passports, residence permits, and a foreign permanent-resident identity card. A foreign passport is not in that machine list. Use the staffed counter.
The person at the window may not work in your language. Have the Chinese station names, the date, the train if you know it, and the passport open. Payment at the window is whatever that window takes that day. Do not arrive with an unpaid 12306 order and expect the window to settle it. The payment guide says it will not. If the train you wanted is gone, ask what is still on sale for the trip you can actually make. Do not accept a different city’s station without noticing.
Changes, refunds and what to keep after booking
A confirmed booking is a seat on a named train, for a named person, between two named stations. On an e-ticket there is nothing you have to print in order to ride. Keep the booking where you can open it, including the train number and the Chinese station names, and carry the original document you used to buy it. The English FAQ says an itinerary sheet is not a ticket, and neither is a reimbursement receipt. You can print or download the itinerary, or collect it at a station, for your own record. The station checks the document.
The English order page says order information is kept for 30 days. Save the details somewhere that does not depend on that page still showing them, and somewhere that still opens if the phone has no signal. After that, the station journey is a different task. What happens from the station door to the seat is in China high-speed rail.
Changes and refunds exist, and they depend on the time and on the state of the ticket. On a 12306 booking you handle them on 12306 or at a station window, under the current rules. A booking that lives only with a third party has to be changed through that party. The English FAQ is the page to read on the day you need the rule, because the railway can adjust refunds for a period and will say so at the station.
The shape of the current FAQ is enough to plan around. A ticket can be changed once, to the date, the train, or the seat, when the new seat exists. Changing the arrival station is a separate action, it has to be done at least 48 hours before departure, and a ticket that has been changed that way cannot then be endorsed again. A refund on the website has to be requested before departure. In the current fee rules, a refund more than eight days before the departure date is not charged; inside that, the fee is 5 percent more than 48 hours before departure, 10 percent inside 48 hours and more than 24, and 20 percent inside 24 hours, with a minimum of 2 yuan. A peak period can be different. Those percentages are the FAQ’s current bands, not a promise that a later notice will leave them untouched.
One narrower rule is worth knowing if the purchase was the wrong train. The FAQ currently allows one free refund on one order per day, for a purchase on the official 12306 website, app, or Alipay mini-program, paid electronically or with points, when the travel date is on or after 2 February 2026. The refund has to be within 30 minutes of purchase and at least four hours before departure. It does not cover a ticket you have already changed, a waitlist order, or several other products the FAQ names. Read that item before you rely on it. It is a limited undo, not a general right to cancel free.
You have a booking in the right name, for the right stations, paid, with the passport that matches it. The next problem is the station, not another screen.