next »

[MK]

Foreigners face rail ticket delay

If you are a foreigner, you'll need your passport or residence permit (which as far as I know is in your passport anyway) to buy bullet train (G, D) tickets from now on.  Chinese citizens must use their ID card. 

Foreigners will no longer be able to use the automated ticket machines at train stations, as these will only accept Chinese ID card numbers.

Some choice quotes from the article:

Dong added that not all railway staff, unlike their airline counterparts, are proficient in English and other foreign languages, which could lead to misunderstandings.

Passengers should also show the certificates (e.g. passport) and tickets when boarding the trains.

To speed up the process, Dong advised foreign passengers to use residence permits, which are issued by local police and easy to recognize, instead of passports, which vary from country to country.

Rail official stressed that automatic ticket machines at railway stations will only recognize Chinese residents' ID cards.

[dragonsaver]

WOW!!

What about tourists?  They only have a tourist visa.  They will have to rely on hotels or tour operators to get tickets.  Tourists also speak German, French, Thai,etc as well as English.

Is China closing itself down and stopping tourism?  Add this to the GFW and WOW 

NOT GOOD 

[James the Brit]

Tourists will just use their passport.

[Raoul F. Duke]

Also, not all that many tourists use the Chinese rail system. They tend to fly from city to city. And if they DO use the train, the tickets are generally handled by their guide, their hotel, or their travel agency...

[The Local Dialect]

I don't understand. Like MK said, your residence permit is in your passport, so you can't use it "instead." It isn't really all that easy to recognize either as it looks just like any other visa except for the words at the top, and it doesn't have a picture on it anyhow so even if it were separate, it wouldn't be a very good form of ID. It sounds like the rail officials are talking out their asses to me.

[old34]

Also, not all that many tourists use the Chinese rail system. They tend to fly from city to city. And if they DO use the train, the tickets are generally handled by their guide, their hotel, or their travel agency...

Which will mean handing over your passport to a hotel/travel agent so they can buy the tickets? According to the article, they will be using real name registration on tickets which means your name must be printed on the ticket.

Also, since most Chinese names are only two or three (and occasionally 4) characters, will their system and ticket-printers be able to handle foreigners' passport names, including middle names, which take up 20-30+ characters/letters/spaces? And what happens if they can't? Does the name get chopped off...and thus doesn't match your passport which you now have to show at the train station as well as the ticket? (e.g.  WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON's train ticket says WILLIAM JEFF)

Will the ticket clerk even be able to figure out which is your family name?

On a few recent train rides, not all, a conductor went through the car checking people's IDs and writing down their names on a seating chart. They didn't ask for mine, but wrote something - presumably 老外.

[tomhume89]

Does this make any difference? Seems a good idea to me as it stops those bastard touts who seem to buy every ticket on the trains I want 

And how different can passports be? I've bought 3 or 4 tickets in the past few months and had to use my passport and there was no problem or delay.

[Raoul F. Duke]

@ Old34: Well, my friend, I'm sure the dreaded 老外 label will undoubtedly stick...for BOTH of us.

I dunno...seems like the most successful tour guides and travel agents, and definitely the international hotels, have the connections they need to make things happen- especially for the hordes of cash-flush and clueless foreign turistas. I'm pretty sure that this system will find a way to adapt and adjust...as it has a thousand times before

[Borkya]

yeah, and they say it is only for the bullet trains, right? So it only revolves around the major cities which have lots of foreign tourists anyway and are probably more adept at dealing with english. I don't think it will come up for me all that often since I usually take the old, slow, cheaper trains.

[tomhume89]

A lot of smaller cities have the fast trains, and anyway in Guangzhou and Changsha the ticket sellers certainly didn't speak English. At least my ones didn't!

[becster79]

I occassionally get the fast train Guangzhou- Shenzhen, but I can't really understand the ticket machine, and half the time it's out of change anyway so I usually just head to the ticket counter, no prob.  Good thing the trains are every 10mins, even if I'm held up now with ID etc it's not a huge deal.

Generally speaking however, China's transport system seriously puts Australia's to shame!

[MK]

I don't understand. Like MK said, your residence permit is in your passport, so you can't use it "instead."

After talking with a couple of people, I think they might mean the piece of paper you get from your local police station when you register there.

Anyway, my main grievance is that something that was relatively simple and convenient, i.e. buying a train ticket at the local ticket office, or better yet using one of the many self service ticket machines around, has just got a whole lot less so.

There's also the potential Roman character / English name confusion that Old34 mentioned.

Basically, I hope it DOES stop touts/scalpers, but if you live in China and ride the rails regularly, this mostly sounds like it's going to be yet another pain in the ass to deal with.

[old34]

Another small point in the article...you can only buy one ticket for one trip. For the last 3 or 4 years, you could buy tickets for the whole trip so you didn't have to deal with buying tickets for each leg at each train station. For example you could do a NJ-SH-HZ-SH-WX-NJ at the ticket window as long as you had your train nos., times and dates and walk away with all 6 tickets. Now, you'll have to take an hour out of your day at each city to go and get tickets for the next leg dealing with the incompetence 6 times rather than once.

This really does suck.

And speaking of IDs, the old FECs used to have your name written in Chinese and English which would have made them perfect IDs to use under this new system. Both my main bank account and my phone are under my Chinese name only because when I originally set them up, their system couldn't handle the long English name when I registered. At last I pulled out the FEC I had then and they said, "Oh! OK, we'll use this name" and I was good to go. ( I still have that FEC 'cause I need to show it if I need something done on the bank account or the phone account.)

But the present FECs omitted the Chinese part and now only have the name in your passport. Maybe SAFEA can go retro and bring back the old FECs to make them relevant again and useful for once.

[Raoul F. Duke]

Oh Lord, FECs.
I still have nightmares from the old days...

[MK]

Now, you'll have to take an hour out of your day at each city to go and get tickets for the next leg dealing with the incompetence 6 times rather than once.

Old34, I was really hoping that bit actually meant one ticket per train ?