Attraction tickets with a foreign passport

What the national rules actually say

Three documents sit above the venue pages. They are worth reading precisely, because each one is routinely quoted as something it does not say.

• The passport sentenceThe nine-ministry Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Tourism Public Services (文旅公共发〔2024〕41号, signed 19 June 2024, full text published by the Xing'an League administration on 7 August 2024) instructs: "推动入境游客较多的景区开发多语种预约界面，将护照等纳入有效预约证件，并保留必要的人工服务窗口." In other words, at scenic areas with many inbound visitors, build multilingual booking interfaces, make passports and documents like them valid booking credentials, and keep the staffed service window that this implies. This is the strongest sentence available to a traveller, and it is also the reason a staffed window should exist when an app refuses you.
• The reversalAn office notice from the National Cultural Heritage Administration on summer museum services, carried by the Shandong culture and tourism department on 22 July 2026, tells venues to size their capacity honestly and then, quote, "对具备条件的场馆原则上取消预约限制" — institutions with the conditions for it should in principle drop reservation requirements, and where booking is kept, simplify the process and retain staffed windows and telephone booking. Some of what you read about "everything in China needs booking seven days ahead" is now officially out of date, and some of it survives because the venue has kept booking.
• The money sentenceA four-department notice on payment at cultural and tourist venues, published by the Baiyin culture and tourism bureau on 15 April 2024, requires 4A and 5A rated scenic areas and similar venues to accept domestic and foreign bank cards, and states that "重点文旅场所相关经营主体应保留人工售票窗口，支持现金支付." The State Council opinion behind it (国办发〔2024〕10号, dated 1 March 2024) is broader: major shopping districts, scenic areas, museums and transport hubs must have the hardware to take mobile payment, cards and cash, so the buyer can choose. This is a rule about how you pay, not about which document you hold. It does not mean a passport buys a ticket at a window.

None of the three sets an advance booking period, a release time, or an obligation to honour a foreign visitor's claim to a discount. Those live in the venue pages, which is where the next section goes.

Three checks before you book anywhere

Every venue below was checked against these three questions, and they are the ones worth asking of a place we have not listed.

• One · Does the page name your document?The useful phrase in Chinese pages is 非中国内地观众, "visitors from outside the mainland", because the sentence that follows lists what those people may use: 护照 (passport) alongside 港澳居民来往内地通行证, 台湾居民来往大陆通行证 and 外国人永久居留身份证. Where a page instead writes only 有效身份证件 or 身份证号码, the field may not be a formatting problem you can talk your way through. Suzhou Museum tells adults booking for children to use the child's household-registration ID number, which is a good illustration of who these forms were built for.
• Two · When does it release, and how much?This is the part guides generalise most badly, because there is no common number. The advance window in the venues below runs five days in one case and seven in three others, at three different clock times, and the mausoleum museum at Xi'an publishes release times without a dated advance period. Read the release sentence on the venue's own page before you plan a morning.
• Three · Who sells through the official channel?The Palace Museum, the Shaanxi History Museum and the National Museum of China each publish an explicit statement that they have authorised no third party to sell tickets or bundling services, and the national summer notice tells regulators to crack down on scalpers hoarding inventory. One exception deserves mention because it is official rather than tolerated: the Shanghai Museum's own visitor notice, in force since 30 June 2026, says inbound visitors may book and buy through trip.com, the international edition of Ctrip. That is one named venue, not a general licence.

Venue by venue

Seven cases where the venue's own text answers the passport question, or refuses to. Dates in each entry are the dates we could find on the page or in the page's address; where a rule sits on an undated standing page, that is said out loud rather than smoothed over.

Palace Museum, Beijing

The most documented case and the strictest. Booking is real-name for everyone, including visitors who would enter free and the adults with them, and the museum sells no same-day tickets. The English visitor page on its multilingual site says plainly that "foreign visitors are required to provide passport numbers during the online booking", and the Chinese rule lists passport as one of the documents for visitors from outside the mainland, alongside the two travel permits, the two residence permits and the permanent residence card. One document may hold one ticket per visit day, the ticket is for that person only, and no change of ticket type, date, session or visitor is allowed after purchase.

• Official channelThe 故宫博物院 WeChat mini program, which the museum names as the channel to use, and the ticketing site ticket.dpm.org.cn. The multilingual site explains the rule in English; the ordering interface itself is Chinese.
• ReleaseTickets and exhibition places open at 20:00 seven days before the visit date, used only on that date. Closed Mondays except statutory holidays.
• EntryWumen (午门) is the only entrance, and you must carry the original document you booked with. The museum says face-recognition equipment assists the real-name check, that face data is compared in real time and not stored, and that staff handle anything the equipment cannot. Morning sessions stop admitting at 12:00; afternoon sessions do not begin before 11:00. Exit by Shenwu Men or Donghua Men.
• Price¥60 peak (1 April to 31 October), ¥40 off-peak, plus ¥10 each for the Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery.
• Refund and no-showAn unused ticket may be returned through the original channel before 24:00 on the day before your visit with no penalty; after that it counts as one no-show, at most one per person per day, and three no-shows within 180 days bar you from booking for 60 days from the day after the third. Money returns along the original payment route within five working days.
• Contact400-950-1925, 08:00 to 20:00 all year, on the visitor rules page; [email protected] on the English page. Ticket windows at the visitor centre, the Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery work 08:30 to 16:00 in peak season and 08:30 to 15:30 in the off season.

One dated example shows how the pieces move together. To mark the second anniversary of the Central Axis inscription the museum opened free on Monday 27 July 2026, with bookings from 20:00 on 24 July through the mini program only, and the notice added that on that day the ticket windows at Duanmen, the Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery would not provide service. Stating the exception confirms the windows normally exist.

Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Xi'an

The Terracotta Army site is the clearest "yes" to the passport, and the weakest to dates. Its standing visitor page states that visitors including those entitled to free entry, visitors from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and abroad, book through the official website and the WeChat accounts, that the website accepts a second-generation ID card or passport details, and that visitors pass the check lane with an original document from a list that ends with 护照. A pre-holiday notice dated 20 April 2023 adds the release pattern, timed entry and the phone numbers.

• Official channelbmy.com.cn and the two official WeChat accounts it names.
• ReleaseThe 2023 notice opened holiday sales early and released tickets daily at 10:00, 15:00 and 20:00, with timed checking. How many days ahead tickets are released is not stated in any dated official page we could find.
• Capacity65,000 visitors a day, and sales stop at the limit.
• EntryThe check lane verifies the ticket against the original document, with passport named.
• ContactTicketing 029-81399127, complaints and assistance 029-81399174.

The caveat is worth stating because it is unusual: the museum's own announcement column's most recent dated item we could reach ends at 4 May 2023. Holiday arrangements for 2024 to 2026 circulate only through third-party reprints, so they are not reproduced here.

Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an

The most useful page in this whole subject for anyone holding a foreign passport, because it is the one that tells you what actually happens at the gate. Its visiting guide lists passport as booking document number four of five for the main building, states that visitors from outside the mainland may book with the two travel permits, the two residence permits or a passport, and describes entry as a person-to-document comparison. The Qin Han annex goes further: mainland visitors scan an ID card, and visitors from outside the mainland may enter with a passport, with staff verifying on site and completing the entry procedure by hand.

• ReleaseFive days ahead, at 17:00 each day: the example on the page is 1 July for 6 July. You may pre-fill visitor details, but a pre-filled record is not a booking, unfinished ones are cleared at 24:00, and one pre-fill may hold at most five visitors.
• LimitsOne document may appear in at most three pre-fills a day, may hold one booking order a day, at most four successful orders in 30 days including refunds, and one WeChat account at most three orders every seven days.
• EntryOriginal document plus the successful order, in your session; the page says plainly that a mismatch or a missed session means no entry. If you arrive without the original document, the stated route is the south gate service window with an electronic ID or a police-issued certificate and the order, exchanging for an entry pass. That route is published by this museum, not by all of them.
• Paid exhibitionsThe Tang dynasty mural gallery and the current special exhibition sell both online in advance and on site inside the museum, and buying one of those tickets means you do not need also to book the free basic exhibition.
• Refund and no-showRefund through the booking platform before checking stops for your session; after that it is treated as a no-show, and a no-show bars booking for 180 calendar days.
• Contact and hours029-85253806. The page prints the current season as 6 May to 14 November 2026, and a holiday notice dated 20 September 2026 sets 25 to 27 September and 1 to 7 October at 07:30 to 20:30, checking stops at 19:30, with 17,500 entries a day.

National Museum of China, Beijing

Included mainly as the honest limit of this exercise. Its visitor booking notice, printed 25 July 2025 and in force from 1 August 2025, plus a further notice of 18 September 2026, describe a free ticket up to seven days ahead, released at 17:00, with refund possible until 15:00 on the day of visit, entry at the north gate with the original booked document, and a quota regime: one booking per account per week, up to five people, at most ten saved travellers which cannot be altered for 30 days, four bookings per document per month and one per day. Refunds still count against the quota. Three failures to appear cut the document off for 30 days.

Nowhere in the notice, the announcement column or the desktop booking site does the page print 护照 or "passport". Booking also requires an account that has completed real-name authentication, which since 22 April 2025 has run through the national online identity authentication service or through WeChat. What that means for a visitor whose identity documents are foreign, the official text does not say, and neither do we. The demand figures it does give explain why people assume the door is shut: in 2024 the museum reported around 1.6 million people a day chasing 26,000 tickets in summer, and about 520,000 a day for the same 26,000 in the off season.

Suzhou Museum

Another page that never says passport. Its booking notice, which carries no date at all, runs a full real-name reservation system seven days ahead with the system open 08:00 to 23:00, allows same-day booking if capacity remains, sets the last same-day booking at 20 minutes before entry closes, permits one change per ticket and only into another session on the same date, and defines missed attendance generously: arrive outside 30 minutes either side of your slot and the ticket is void. Two consecutive misses, or four within 90 days, trigger a 90-day booking block for this museum's tickets and activities; behaviour that breaks the rules can put a visitor on a barred list for a year. Children who have no ID card are booked with the ID number on their household registration.

Two useful things survive the passport silence. The west branch does not require a booking at all: visitors come and pass security, with flow control if the building reaches capacity. And the exemption list, which covers service personnel, people with disabilities, and residents aged 70 and above with one accompanying adult, is written around "corresponding valid documents", which is the same phrasing problem as everywhere else.

Shanghai Museum, People's Square

The venue that will meet a foreign visitor halfway. Its visitor notice, in force since 30 June 2026, says individual visitors book through the museum's WeChat mini program and, for inbound visitors specifically, that they may book and buy through trip.com, then enter with the original document through the south gate individual lane. Groups of twenty or more book by telephone seven days ahead, not counting the day itself, on 021-63724550, with a daily cap and no admission for unbooked walk-in groups. Opening is 09:00 to 17:00 with entry stopping at 15:00, and late-opening runs to 21:00 with entry stopping at 19:00, closed Mondays other than national holidays. Visitors aged 65 and above, serving and retired military, fire and rescue personnel and police enter through the south gate green lane on showing their own valid document and a same-day ticket; people with disabilities enter free on their own document. The foreign-language audio guide rents for ¥40 with a deposit of ¥400, or US$50, or a passport.

A temporary wrinkle matters if you are going for the collections rather than a show: during the Americas exhibition, dated 9 July 2026 to 14 November 2027 on the page, the People's Square building shows nothing else, and permanent and other special exhibitions move to the East Branch at 1952 Century Avenue.

Beijing municipal parks

The only case where a government publishes the whole thing for you in English. The city's inbound-services guide, dated 19 January 2026 on its listing page, walks through buying tickets for nine municipal parks on the 畅游公园 website, WeChat account or mini program, notes that the site defaults to Chinese and can be switched to English from the "Language" control at the top right, and states two lines that settle most arguments: foreign visitors can purchase tickets with passports or permanent residence permits, and at the gate you scan the e-ticket QR code and present a valid ID such as your passport. The nine parks are the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Beihai, Jingshan, Zhongshan Park, Xiangshan, Beijing Zoo, Yuyuantan and Taoranting. Zizhuyuan Park is free and needs no reservation; other parks run their own platforms.

Getting through the gate

This is where the passport question really bites, and the wording of the sources is more informative than any summary. The Shaanxi museum's rule for its Qin Han annex is the explicit one: mainland visitors scan an ID card, and visitors from outside the mainland may use a passport, with staff completing verification. The Palace Museum promises document-original-plus-face-assist and hands exceptions to staff. Beijing's parks ask for two things, the code and the passport. The National Museum of China refuses entry to anyone whose document does not match the booking. Read together, they describe a self-service lane built around the mainland card system, and a human being on the other side of it. Plan on the person.

• Carry the originalEvery venue above conditions entry on the physical document used at booking. A phone photo of a passport data page appears in none of these rules; the one museum that offers a fallback for a forgotten document asks for an electronic ID or a police certificate, which is a route for residents.
• Treat the session as hardThe Palace Museum will not scan you in before 11:00 for an afternoon ticket or after 12:00 for a morning one. Suzhou voids a ticket outside 30 minutes either side. The Xi'an museums say a missed session is simply no entry, and the national museum says the same. Being late is not a ticket problem, it is a no-show, with the consequences below.
• Expect the staffed channel to existThat expectation has a source: the nine-ministry instruction of June 2024 says keep the necessary staffed windows, and the 2024 payment notices say keep a window that takes cash and foreign cards. Asking at a window is the documented path, even though no venue publishes a promise about what happens there.

Free entry and the document wall

The most expensive misunderstanding in this subject is not about booking. It is about discounts, because Chinese concession rules are usually written as a list of documents rather than a list of people, and a foreign passport fails the document test even where the person passes the age test.

• Palace Museum"未满18周岁的中国公民（含港澳台居民及获得永久居留权的外国人）免费参观，但须预约" — Chinese citizens under 18, and this explicitly includes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents and foreigners who hold permanent residence, enter free but must still book. A foreign child on a passport is outside that sentence. Visitors aged 60 and above get half price "凭有效身份证原件", on an original resident ID card; students above 18 buy a ¥20 ticket on a student card and a school letter. An accompanying adult gets no concession and must book.
• Mausoleum site, Xi'anThe free categories in the dated 2023 notice are 65 and above, children of 16 and under accompanied by a parent, and visitors with disabilities, with no nationality or document qualifier in the sentence, while the half-price student concession requires a Chinese school student card. People entitled to free entry still book in advance, and the free-entry lane asks for the relevant original document, listing military and disability certificates.
• Shaanxi History MuseumVisitors of 65 and above need no reservation and may "刷身份证直接检票入馆", scan an ID card and walk in. Children under 6 or under 1.4 m enter with a booked adult, two per adult. The exemption document list is entirely made of Chinese documents, and those visitors are told to bring the matching original plus an ID card.
• Suzhou and ShanghaiSuzhou's exemptions for 70 and above, serving military and people with disabilities are personal, usable once every three months, and keyed to "corresponding valid documents". Shanghai's green lane for 65 and above asks for your own valid document and a same-day ticket, which at least assumes a purchased ticket rather than a national ID.

So: no official source says a foreign passport is excluded from every concession, and none says it is included. Age-based courtesy sometimes survives a foreign document; credential-based concession almost never does. That is why the Palace Museum's free category for under-18s reads as the exception it is, and why the adult accompanying a child who qualifies pays full price for the same doorway.

Cancellations and the ban lists

These are the numbers that make a difference to a two-week itinerary, and they are not shared. A no-show at Suzhou Museum is not a Suzhou problem for a fortnight; it is a 90-day block.

• Palace MuseumFree and clean if you cancel before 24:00 the day before. Later than that it is booked as a no-show, at most one per day, and three within 180 days mean sixty days without booking. Refunds travel back along the payment route within five working days.
• National Museum of ChinaCancel by 15:00 on the day. The refund still counts against your monthly quota. Three no-shows cost a document thirty days of booking, and deleting and re-registering an account does not reset anything: a cancelled account cannot be used again for thirty days.
• Shaanxi History MuseumCancel before checking stops for your session; missing that deadline is a no-show and a 180 calendar day block. Because the same page caps a document at four successful orders per 30 days including refunds, careless cancelling burns the quota as well as the record.
• Suzhou MuseumCancel before the end of your booked slot. Miss it twice running, or four times in 90 days, and the block lasts 90 days.

The Xi'an mausoleum museum and the Shanghai Museum publish no cancellation or no-show terms in the pages above, so there is nothing to quote for them. For context on why these lists tightened: the same 2026 national heritage notice tells local authorities to build joint supervision with other regulators, "严厉打击黄牛囤票倒票行为", and to complete booking-compliance oversight and credit management systems. It does not describe a nationwide blacklist shared between venues, and the claim that one exists has no first-party source we can find.

If it is sold out

Four alternatives have a first-party source. The rest of what circulates, including "keep refreshing for returned tickets" and "ask at Duanmen", does not.

• Same day, if capacity remainsSuzhou Museum allows a same-day booking when tickets are left, up to 20 minutes before entry closes, on an undated standing page. The Palace Museum rules this out in its own words: no same-day tickets.
• Change buildingSuzhou's west branch needs no reservation at all. During the Americas exhibition the Shanghai Museum's permanent collections are at the East Branch instead of People's Square. Xi'an's Qin Han annex admits visitors without a booking, with passport verification handled by staff.
• Pay for the special exhibitionThe Shaanxi History Museum sells its mural gallery and current special exhibition both online and on site, and says that a paid exhibition ticket means you do not also need the free basic-exhibition reservation. This is the closest thing to an official on-site route in the set, and it is narrower than it sounds: it belongs to those two ticketed shows.
• Book the group channel, or the school channelShanghai's telephone line 021-63724550 is for parties of twenty or more, seven days ahead. The Palace Museum's summer 2026 measure for minors' groups runs by email to [email protected] for organised institutional groups with at least 85% minors, capped at 200 groups a day, with the adult tickets bought separately and the paperwork presented at ticket window 8 on Duanmen square. It is a channel for a school, not for a family.

Who to call, and which number is dead

Start with the venue. Every booking page above carries a telephone number printed on the same page as the rule it explains, and those lines are the ones that can look up a booking: the Palace Museum's 400-950-1925 from 08:00 to 20:00 all year, the mausoleum museum's 029-81399127 for tickets and 029-81399174 for complaints, the Shaanxi History Museum's 029-85253806, the Shanghai Museum's 021-60226699 for enquiries and 021-63724550 for group booking. They are published channels, not service-level promises, and the pages carrying the first three are undated.

If you need a public number instead, dial 12345, not 12301. The State Council's opinion on local government service hotlines (国办发〔2020〕53号, dated 28 December 2020, published on the Ministry of Finance's Jiangsu regulatory bureau site on 30 November 2021) merged low-volume lines into the 12345 government services hotline with 24-hour human service, and its annex list puts "全国统一旅游资讯服务电话 12301" under lines absorbed whole, which means the number was cancelled. A Taishan culture and tourism notice of 13 December 2021 says it in a headline: goodbye 12301, hello 12345. The old tourism line 12301.cn resolves but serves no usable page from this machine.

What we could not verify

Things that are widely stated about booking Chinese attractions with a foreign passport, and what our search found. If any of these acquires a dated first-party source, we will update the section above it and name the source.

• How many days ahead the Xi'an mausoleum museum releases tickets. Its announcement column's dated items stop at 4 May 2023, and later holiday arrangements exist only as third-party reprints.
• Whether the National Museum of China or Suzhou Museum can be booked with a passport. Neither text uses the word, which supports no claim in either direction.
• Any rule about how to type a name, in what order, in pinyin or with middle names. Not one page in this set says anything about name formatting.
• How the booking systems treat a foreign document internally: rate limits, device or IP rules, whether face liveness rejects foreign passports, whether foreigners are risk-flagged. All folklore to us.
• That a passport buys a ticket at a window. The staffed window is required by policy to exist; no venue here states what it sells, and the Palace Museum sells nothing on the day.
• Whether foreign children or older visitors get concessions as a class. Both "foreigners never qualify" and "age qualifies everywhere" are unsourced; the venue-by-venue wording is the only ground.
• Shanghai Science and Technology Museum rules of any kind. Its ticketing pages are a rendered shell with no static text to cite, which is why it is absent from the table.
• Returned-ticket refresh tricks, scalper inventory percentages, or which minute to reload at. No source, and the paid-exhibition route above is the only legitimate second door we found.

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