How to Read a China Train Ticket, Understand the Info on the Train Ticket

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How to Read a China Train Ticket

If you are planning your first train travel in China, this article will address you on how to read and understand the critical information on a Chinese train ticket. Though you maybe unable to understand a single Chinese character, you could undertake a smooth train journey in China even just by yourself.

Two Types of Train Tickets in China

You are likely to get two different types of train tickets, respectively the blue one and pink one. Here are the slight differences between them when you board the train.

Blue Magnetic Ticket

The blue magnetic tickets are usually used to take high-speed trains. If you hold a blue ticket, you shall have them read by the automatic ticket machine when going through the security check at the entry or check-in before boarding. Just inserting the ticket into the machine, you will be given an access to the platform or exit.

Pink Paper Ticket

Pink tickets are mostly for normal speed trains, while sometimes the ticket for highspeed train might be pink if issued from an old station. There is no magnetic stripe in the pink ticket, so they cannot be accepted by the automatic ticket machine, but need to be checked manually by the station attendants instead.

Read a Train Ticket

The information shown on blue and pink tickets are exactly the same, including the departure station, arrival station, seat/sleeper type, train number, departure date, ticket price, name and passport number of the passenger, valid date, ticket number and two-dimensional code. In fact, you don’t need to understand all the texts on the ticket, and here we list the most critical information worthy of your attention.

Departure & Arrival Stations

Both departure and arrival stations are displayed with the largest Chinese characters on the train ticket, below which the English station names are shown (actually in Chinese Pinyin). There is one point you need to notice is that the station name is sometimes tailed with different directions including dong, nan, xi or bei because there are usually more one train stations in most cities. It is necessary for you to know some Chinese characters of directions, so that you will not go to the wrong railway station.

dong东: East
nan南: South
xi西: West
bei北: North

Train Number

The number between the departure and arrival stations is the train number. It is a key info usually demonstrated on LED screens for you to locate the waiting room and boarding gate. The number is often prefixed with an English letter to tell the train type. G, D, and C are for high-speed trains while others like Z, T and K are for normal speed trains.