How Chinese high-speed rail actually works

Understanding how the network actually works is worth an hour of your attention before you travel, because the rail decisions shape the itinerary more than the hotel decisions do.

What the trains are, and what the letters mean

Train numbers start with a letter and the letter tells you what you are getting.

• G trains are the fastest, up to about 217 miles per hour (350 km/h). These are what you want.
• D trains are high speed but slower, often on older track or overnight.
• C trains are short intercity runs, typically under an hour.
• Z, T and K trains are the old conventional network. Slow, cheap, occasionally romantic, and not how we move you between cities on a two-week trip.

The G trains are quiet, punctual to a degree that surprises people who have travelled elsewhere, and they run from city centre to city centre. There is a power socket at every seat, hot water at the end of every carriage and a trolley selling food that is fine rather than good. Bring your own lunch from the station concourse, which is better.

Seat classes, and which one to buy

First class costs roughly 60 percent more than second and buys you a wider seat, a quieter carriage and enough space to work. On a four and a half hour run from Beijing to Xi’an that is money well spent. Business class costs two to three times first and is a luxury rather than an improvement in the day. Actual fares are in what two weeks in China costs.

The thing that catches people out: your passport is your ticket

Rail tickets in China are sold against an identity document, and for a foreign visitor that document is your passport.

That has four consequences worth knowing before you stand in a station at seven in the morning.

1. The name on the booking must match your passport exactly. A middle name dropped or added is a real problem rather than a minor one.
2. You must carry the physical passport, not a photograph of it, on every rail day. This is the most common reason an independent traveller misses a train in China.
3. Automatic gates read Chinese identity cards. With a foreign passport you frequently use the manned gate at the end of the row, and that queue moves at a different speed.
4. You cannot casually give your ticket to a friend. Bookings are tied to the traveller.

We hold the reservations for every leg of your itinerary, put the train numbers, carriage and seat numbers in your day-by-day document, and our partner team meets you at the station on the days where the station is genuinely large enough to be confusing.

Stations behave like airports

This is the second surprise. A major Chinese rail station is not a European platform under a canopy. Beijing South and Shanghai Hongqiao move more people in a day than most airports, and they run on the same logic: you enter through a security check, you wait in a concourse, the platform is announced fifteen to twenty minutes before departure and everybody moves at once.

Practical timings we build into itineraries:

• Arrive 45 minutes before departure at a major station, 30 at a small one.
• Boarding closes several minutes before departure and the closure is absolute. The train leaves on time, always.
• Allow an hour of city transfer time on either end, more in Beijing at rush hour.

The doors-close discipline is the reason Chinese trains keep time and it is unforgiving. We do not schedule a tight connection onto a flight after a rail leg, and we do not build a rail day that starts with a taxi at peak hour if we can avoid it.

Booking, and when the good seats disappear

Booking opens a set period ahead of departure and that window has been adjusted more than once in recent years, so we confirm the current rule rather than publishing a number that will age. What does not change is the pattern: popular legs on Friday afternoons, Sunday evenings and either side of the two national holiday weeks sell out, and the first thing to go is first class, not second.

The legs that matter on most itineraries:

Note what those times do to a day. Beijing to Xi’an leaves after a slow breakfast and delivers you in time to cycle the city walls before dinner. That is a travel day that is not a lost day, and it is the reason we route China by rail wherever the rail exists.

When to fly instead

Rail is not always the answer, and pretending otherwise produces itineraries with two wasted days in them. We fly when the leg is genuinely long:

• Beijing or Shanghai to Kunming, Lijiang or the far southwest
• Anything into Xinjiang, including Urumqi and Kashgar
• Chengdu to Yunnan or to the far west
• Any leg where the rail time exceeds about six hours and a flight saves you most of a day

Domestic flying in China is competent and reasonably priced. Delays are common enough that we do not schedule anything important for the evening of a flying day, and we do not put a flight on the day of an international connection if it can be avoided.

There is one further case for the old slow network: the overnight sleeper. On a few routes it saves a hotel night and gets you somewhere at breakfast. It is a real experience and the soft sleeper compartments are comfortable enough. We offer it where it genuinely earns its place, and we tell you honestly that it is a night of broken sleep.

What we do with all of this

Every China itinerary we build states the train number, the departure time, the class and the station name rather than just the city name, because in Beijing the station you leave from is a forty minute decision. We hold the reservations under your passport details, we brief you on the gate and the timing, and our partner teams in Beijing, Chengdu and Kunming handle the station side. Our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines, so we say plainly that China runs through partners we have worked with for years rather than implying a desk in Beijing that is ours.

Your rail bookings, your hotel confirmations and your payment app all sit on the same phone, which is why we set that phone up before you fly. See paying for things in China.

Plan this trip

Tell us where you want to go and we will build the route around the rail rather than around a map, with the train numbers written into the document. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• China: the complete guide to planning your trip
• What two weeks in China really costs
• Paying for things in China
• How many days do you need in China?
• Deep China in 21 days
• All our China trips

Frequently asked questions