Dear Shirley,

Greetings from Sophie, Top China Travel!

We received your message left on our site last Saturday as below,

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Question: How to obtain train schedules & prices for various starting points and destinations

Name: Shirley Bee

Country:  Chinese, Taiwan

Email:     fhsbee@yahoo.com

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Generally speaking, we check the train schedules and prices at www.12306.cn. You can choose the language to ‘English’. For English website, it is only valid for tourists with Foreign passport. They can check and book tickets on the site and price a E-ticket itinerary in English. However, the E-ticket itinerary is not valid for check in the train. Tourists need to hold their passport to the ticket counter at the station for a verification. It is a bit complicated. Then they can print the paper ticket for check in. The policy and regulation is changeable. It is only for reference.

For some hot routes, for example, the train to Tibet, to Vietnam, to Hong Kong, etc. generally speaking, tourists buy the tickets online. It is better to book a tickets from local agency, who will make early reservation with train station to issue the tickets before they are public on the site.

Hope the above is clear and helpful.