12306 with a foreign passport

Which document, which channel

Article 11 of the passenger regulation is the most useful paragraph in the whole document for a foreign traveller, because it does not publish one list of accepted identity documents. It publishes four, one per channel, and they do not match.

• Website and telephoneEight documents: a Chinese resident ID card including the temporary version, a Chinese passport, the Hong Kong and Macao and the Taiwan residence permits, the two travel permits for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, the permanent residence card for foreigners, and a foreign passport. This is the channel where your passport is fully accepted.
• Ticket machinesNine items on the face of it, but the foreign passport is missing from the machine list. A Chinese passport is there, the permanent residence card is there, the four Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan documents are there. If you are standing at a self-service machine with a foreign passport, the machine is not going to help, whatever the screen offers.
• Window and on-train purchaseThe long list, and the only one that covers problems rather than normal cases: a household register, a Chinese travel document, the entry and exit permit, a newborn's medical birth certificate, seaman's certificate, military and police service documents, a temporary boarding identity paper issued by public security, an entry and exit certificate for foreigners, the receipt for a visa or residence application, a passport loss report, and a temporary international travel document issued by an embassy or consulate provided a Chinese visa or stay permit is attached.
• RidingArticle 24 says the credential for travelling is the valid identity document you used to buy. Not a screenshot, not the booking email. Whatever number is printed on the ticket has to be the one you physically present.

Read the four lists together and one strategy appears. If you hold a permanent residence card for foreigners, or one of the Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan travel permits, register with that rather than your passport, because those documents appear on the gate-readable list and a passport does not. Holders of the newer permanent residence card, issued from 1 December 2023, were told at the time they could register, buy, and use the station gates for identity check and boarding in the same way as a resident ID card holder.

If the passport is your only document, nothing prevents you from buying. What you lose is the machine and the gate, and you should plan a window visit into the schedule for collecting a reimbursement paper or for anything the website refuses.

Registering without a Chinese ID

The site asks for a real name, a document type, a document number, a nationality, a mobile number or email. The place where foreigners fail is the name field, and the verification notice gives rules for it that are worth reading before you type, because a mismatched name is what produces the refused status later.

For a foreign passport the notice says to enter the English name from the document, in the order it appears on the document, and to keep the spaces: spaces inside a surname or a given name are typed, and a space separates surname from given name. Where the name is written in another script, use what the passport shows. The permanent residence card may be entered in Chinese or English. There is a 30-character limit on the field, counted with a Chinese character worth two, and the older help page tells holders of very long names to enter the first 30 characters in order from the first character, dropping spaces; the newer notice tells holders of a foreign passport who use an English name to enter all of it. Type what the notice asks and let the window correct the rest.

• A rare character you cannot type may be replaced by its lowercase pinyin without tones, or by a homophone, and traditional forms by simplified ones
• A capital X in an ID number needs your input method switched from full width to half width, with the caps lock on
• A middle dot or a period in a name has to be typed as the document prints it, so look rather than assume
• Names mixing Chinese and English are allowed for internet booking, per the registration help page
• One document, one travel date and one train equals one ticket, so a couple buying together is two passenger records, not one transaction doubled

If the site says the identity information is already registered, or warns of duplicate identity information, that is not a bug to be argued with. The registration page tells the person concerned to go to a station window with the document itself and says plainly not to send someone else to do it. If you get as far as adding fellow travellers, note that "已通过" or "预通过" passenger records cannot be deleted for 30 days, an account still in 待核验 cannot add anyone at all, and passenger records waiting to be verified are capped at five, with a total of thirty across the account.

The four verification statuses, and what each one unlocks

12306 checks registrants and passengers against a national identity authority, and the state that comes back is printed in your account under personal information, or for a passenger under the frequently used travellers screen. The current notice defines three states: 已通过 means the check passed and the name, document type, document number and nationality are then locked against editing; 待核验 means the check is in progress; 未通过 means it ran and failed, and the fix is to correct the entry against the document. A fourth phrase, 预通过, appears on the older electronic ticket help page, where it marks a window pre-check that has been accepted. Two pages on the same site word this differently and the site does not reconcile them, so treat 预通过 as verified for buying but expect the paperwork that page describes.

Where it says so in terms: an account or a passenger in 待核验 or 未通过 cannot buy. Verified passengers may be bought for, and a passport or travel-permit account may only buy for passengers holding the same class of document, which is why a mixed group of a Chinese friend and two foreign friends is built up one record at a time.

The date that changed this for foreign travellers is 28 November 2023. Before it, the only way out of 待核验 with a foreign passport was physically going to a window. The railway announced an online route on that day, and it still describes two paths. Type the name, nationality and document number and the system attempts the match itself, or upload a photograph of the passport data page and leave it to a person in the background. The window was kept open as an alternative rather than replaced. The practical point people miss is that the online route is not instant in the sense of certain: a submission that stays 待核验 has not failed, it is queued, so check the status again before you assume you must go in.

Cut-off times, the 15-day window, and what "hours before departure" means

• Sales hoursInternet ticket sales on 12306 run in principle from 06:00 to 23:30 Beijing time, not around the clock.
• Advance windowFifteen days, counting the travel day itself. This was set from 1 June 2022 in a railway notice that also restated the refund steps, and the cross-border rule for trains to Hong Kong still publishes fifteen days.
• Last minute onlineBooking, changing and refunding on the site must be completed no later than 25 minutes before departure. Inside that window the station window takes over.
• Changing the destinationThe change-destination service closes 48 hours before departure.
• Cross-borderFor tickets whose departure station is Hong Kong West Kowloon, the cross-border rule that took effect on 1 April 2026 sets 30 minutes rather than 25.
• BoardingStations stop the gates before departure and have to publish that cut-off at the station, so the number differs by building. It is in article 22 of the regulation, and it is not on the booking page.

One conflict deserves stating rather than smoothing over. The 25-minute cut-off comes from the booking help page. Two older documents that 12306 still publish, the internet sales measures and the electronic ticket notice, say purchases must be made no later than two hours before departure, and one of them also describes collecting a paper ticket before boarding when you hold a document other than a resident ID card. The site has not withdrawn either text. Since the difference is between 25 minutes and two hours, the sensible reading is to treat 25 minutes as the published line for a routine online transaction and two hours as the moment you should already be standing at a window if anything about your document or your ticket is unusual.

What changing and refunding cost

Both ladders are published in the railway's own purchase notice, and the change ladder is in the regulation. They are separate tables, which matters because people assume a change resets the refund clock. It mostly does not.

Refunds. More than eight days before departure, nothing. From 48 hours to eight days, 5% of the printed fare. Between 24 and 48 hours, 10%. Inside 24 hours, 20%. "Eight days and above" counts inclusively, which is what makes the mid-January case below come out at 5% rather than nothing. Two adjustments: a ticket inside eight days that you change to a train eight or more days out and then refund still pays 5%, and if the changed ticket's travel date falls in the Spring Festival travel season the refund is charged at the inside-24-hours rate, which is 20%, however early you ask.

Changes. One per ticket. Forty-eight hours or more before departure, free to any train inside the advance window. Under 48 hours, free if you move to the ticket's own date or an earlier one; 5% of the lower printed fare if you move later. After departure, up to 24:00 that day, free for another train that same day, and 40% of the lower printed fare if you move to the next day or beyond. Changing to a cheaper seat refunds the difference and charges the refund rate on that difference; changing after departure and being owed a difference pays the inside-24-hour rate on it.

A worked example. You hold a ticket for a train departing 15 January and refund it on 8 January. Seven days remain, so the free tier at eight days does not apply, and you are far outside 48 hours, so the fee is 5% of the printed fare and 95% returns by the payment method you used. The fee rounds in steps of half a yuan, where a remainder below 2.5角 is dropped, 2.5角 to under 7.5角 becomes 5角 and 7.5角 or more rounds up to a yuan, and no fee is smaller than two yuan. On a ¥120 ticket that is ¥6, and on a ¥30 ticket it is the two yuan floor rather than ¥1.50.

Getting the money back. The refund follows the way you paid. The awkward case is a ticket bought with cash or one where you have already printed a reimbursement document: you may still refund on the site, but you then have 180 days to collect the money at a station window with the passenger's document. The same 180 days covers papers for a change fee. If the railway cancels or cannot carry you as booked, or your connection is wrecked by a delay it announced afterwards, refunds are free of charge, and a seat it rebooks you into costs nothing extra even when it is better than the one you paid for.

On the ticket you keep: the regulation defines a railway electronic invoice as the receipt for payment after sale, change or refund, and the purchase notice says the itinerary prompt you can print has no reimbursement function at all. Tickets bought away from the website keep a paper form. Ask at the window before you rely on either.

At the station: which lane, what to carry

The electronic ticket notice of 19 June 2020 is the document that decides how you get through the concourse, and it divides travellers by whether a machine can read their document.

• 自助闸机, the automatic gatesGranted to holders of a Chinese resident ID card, the Hong Kong and Macao and Taiwan residence permits, the permanent residence card for foreigners, and the two travel permits, described as documents an automated gate can read. Present the document you bought with.
• 人工通道, the staffed laneEveryone else, in the notice's words, plus any child travelling on an accompanying adult's document. With a foreign passport, this is your lane by default at any station. Give the member of staff the passport, not the booking screen.
• The QR routeA registered user who has completed face verification inside the railway app may use the dynamic QR code the app produces at the automatic gates for entry and exit. It is the one way a passport holder can be at the gate rather than the lane, and it depends on the account and your face, not the document.

Two rules on the same page are worth knowing before you travel. If the ticket, the document and the person do not match, the regulation treats you as travelling without a ticket, and the additional charge is half again the fare owed for the part of the journey already ridden. And if you lose the document you bought with, article 39 sends you to the body that issued it for a temporary identity paper before travel; for a passport that is your own embassy or consulate, which is why a photograph of the data page and the number of your ticket earn their keep. The window list of accepted documents does cover a passport loss report and a public security receipt for an in-progress application, but that is a document for buying at a counter, not a gate pass.

Children and the discounted fares

Children are now separated by age rather than height, and the ages are measured on the day you travel, not the day you bought. A child of six but under fourteen travelling with an adult takes the discounted child ticket; from fourteen, the full fare. One adult may bring one child under six free without a seat, provided that child is declared when the tickets are bought, and the document you declare with is the child's travel credential. Undeclared, you pay the child fare for them on the train. If the under-six child is to have a seat, buy the discounted ticket. A child ticket has to be for the same date, train and seat class as the accompanying adult, and no further than the adult's station, and a child under fourteen should be travelling with an adult.

The size of the discount depends on the train. On conventional services the child fare and the student fare are half the published price of the corresponding components. On the EMU services most visitors ride, second class, second-class berth packages and the multi-function seat and first class cost 50% of the executed full fare for a child, special class, premium first and business cost 80%, and every EMU sleeper berth costs 70%. Student tickets cost 75% in the classes where they exist, and a student may buy four single discounted journeys between home and school in each academic year, which the rule counts from 1 October to 30 September, after verifying the discount status once a year on the site or at the station. Discounted tickets for disabled service members and disabled police cost 50%.

What we could not verify

These are the questions this page gets asked and does not answer, because we could not find a railway or government document that states them. Each one is worth a paragraph elsewhere, and none of them is worth a guess here.

• Whether a foreign bank card is accepted at 12306 checkout, and which schemes, because we found no dated official statement of the payment options. The regulation separates electronic from cash payment only when deciding what you may change or refund online. For what a linked overseas card can and cannot do once it is inside a wallet, see how to set up Alipay with a foreign card.
• Whether a foreign mobile number can be used for registration. The rules require a genuine contact method, and the window asks for digits of whatever you registered, but no official text we found says which numbers the system accepts.
• What 候补购票, the waitlist, offers a passenger travelling on a passport. The service appears in the site's own index of topics, and the rules we could read do not tie it to foreign documents.
• Whether 预通过 passengers may use a staffed lane, a gate or both, since the page that uses the phrase also tells them to collect a paper ticket.
• Which stations have finished fitting passport-reading equipment, if any. The 2020 notice classifies documents, not stations, and we found no published station list.
• Whether the website's English interface covers registration and identity verification, or only parts of the flow.
• The precise date the railway electronic invoice displaced the paper reimbursement document in practice, and whether the 30-day window on the older pages still applies to it.

Common questions

Related guides