Beijing Tianjin Train Ticket Online Booking

Waiting for the coming train

 

Today the CCTV news says the Ministry of Railways of China declares that from June 12, 2011, Beijing Tianjin Train ticket online booking will be operated on a trial basis through its China Railway Service Center official website – www.12306.cn. This is an inspiring news, a small but positive step forward to the eventual realization of online train tickets booking in whole China!

With the speedy development of the rail network and rail infrastructure in mainland China, the traditional China Train Tickets booking system has seriously lagged behind in matching the present passenger service. Under the present China train ticket booking scenario, every passenger is required to book train tickets in person from the ticket office at each train station or pay scalping ticket agencies high commissions for getting tickets.

The outdated manual mode of ticket booking has hindered the improvement of the train passenger service and caused much inconvenience to the passengers home and abroad.

It is a letdown that there is no English version at the moment for the official train ticket booking website www.12306.cn (not www.12306.com, so don’t be confused.). Hopefully in near future an English train ticket booking official site will on the market.

Then how to book Beijing Tianjin Train tickets online, what’s the booking procedure? Now I have summed up below the way of how to book the train ticket online after watching and reading the breaking news.

1. Registration

First reigister at www.12306.cn using four kinds of identification information including National Identification Card Republic of China, Hong Kong and Macao Travel Permits, Taiwan Travel Permits and international passports.

2. Easy way of online payment

Using the debit cards or credit cards and cards with a UnionPay sign, which have been registered for online banking at Bank of China, China Industry and Commercial Bank, China Construction Bank, China Agriculture Bank and China Merchant Bank.

3. Train tickets

For Chinese citizens, if you have the second generation ID cards, then you can use your ID cards as your tickets. So you go through the automatic ticket checking machines and or ticket checking on board by presenting your ID cards.

You don’t need a paper ticket. If you want a paper ticket as an invoice for reimbursement, you can change for paper tickets at the ticketing office at each train station. If you have an old version of

China ID cards, you need to change for a paper ticket at the ticketing office before your train departs.

4. Booking time and Refund
www.12306.cn ticket booking time starts from 5:00am to 24:00 midnight. Booking tickets, transit tickets and ticket refunds must be done 2 hours in advance of departure. If within 2 hours, you must go to the ticket office.

After the operation of Beijing Tianjin Train ticket online booking, Beijing Shanghai high speed train tickets will be sold online later this June. In addition, later this year, online train ticket booking will gradually cover all train network in China.

A complete China Train Tickets online booking is still a dream, but the long and beautiful dream has become more tangible.

Any questions,  just drop a line.

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