Trains depart from either
Xi Zhan
, if you're heading south or west, for example
to Chengdu or Xi'an, or
Beijing Zhan , if
you're heading north or east, for example to
Shanghai or Harbin. You can buy
tickets
with an added surcharge of around „40 from
large hotels or CITS, though it's little hassle
to do it yourself direct. Tickets for busy
routes should be booked at least a day in
advance, and can be booked up to four days
ahead. Note that you can buy tickets for trains
leaving from Xi Zhan at Beijing Zhan, and vice
versa; always ask or check the ticket to see
which station your train leaves from. At Beijing
Zhan, the Foreigners' Ticket Booking Office is
at the back of the station, on the left side as
you enter, and is signposted in English. At the
time of writing, it was a hole in the wall;
presumably they'll have built the office by the
time you read this, and they may well extend the
opening hours - at present it's open
5.30-7.30am, 8am-noon and 1.30-4pm, and, for
same-day and surplus next-day tickets only,
7pm-9pm. The Foreigners' Ticket Booking Office
at Xi Zhan, on the second floor, is to the left
side as you enter the building. It boasts more
windows and has longer opening hours (8am-12pm).
The most painless way to buy tickets, however,
is to get them from a separate ticket outlet -
as these are little known, there are never any
queues. There's one on the first floor in the
Wangfujing Department Store at 225 Wangfujing
Dajie (daily 9-11am & 1-4pm) and another in
the Air China ticket office in the China World
Trade Centre at 1 Jianguomenwai Dajie (daily
8am-6pm). A third outlet at the
Great Wall
Sheraton Hotel (daily 8am-5pm) is not easy
to find; it's to the right and at the back as
you enter. If you can speak Chinese, you can
make it even easier for yourself by booking your
ticket over the phone up to four days before
your travel date (Beijing Zhan only; tel
65634672; 6-9pm only, and have your passport
handy), then picking your ticket up the
following morning from an office at 88 Dongsibei
Dajie, at the Beijing Normal University, or at
the National Cigarette Bureau at 6 Fuzhouguan
Dong Jie.
For train information (in Chinese only) phone
65129525
