page_title: Passenger rail transport in China
section_title: Conventional Rail
hierarchical_section_title: Passenger rail transport in China / Accommodation and fares / Conventional Rail
caption_attribution_description: A student train ticket (blue) in China
context_page_description: Passenger rail transport is one of the principal means of transport in the People's Republic of China, with rail passenger traffic exceeding 1.86 billion railway trips in 2011. It is operated by the China Railway Corporation. The Spring Festival Travel Season is the peak railway travel season of the year.
context_section_description: Hard seat (Chinese: 硬座; pinyin: Yìngzuò) is the basic fare, somewhat similar to the economy class on an airplane.  On busier routes, passengers who cannot arrange for better seats because of overcrowding must also purchase this type of ticket. In some cases, tickets are sold with no seat assigned (无座, wú zuò), which allows the railway to sell more tickets than there are seats in the car. Still, even the number of "no seat" tickets offered for sale is limited, to keep overcrowding within limits.
  Soft seat (Chinese: 软座; pinyin: Ruǎnzuò) is one level above the Hard Seat. There are 4 seats per row (2+2), so it has comfortable seating similar to business class on airplanes.
  Hard sleeper (Chinese: 硬卧; pinyin: Yìngwò) is the basic accommodation for an overnight train. Despite the name, the bunks comfortably accommodate anyone below six feet.  Bunks are arranged three on a side in a compartment—indicated by top, middle and bottom on the ticket. There are no doors for the compartments.
  Soft sleeper (Chinese: 软卧; pinyin: Ruǎnwò) contains a wider bunk bed in an enclosed cabin, two bunks to a side.  There is more room for luggage storage than in hard sleeper.  Occasionally there may be an entertainment system where movie channels are available for viewing through headphones and an LCD display for each bunk.
  Luxury sleeper (Chinese: 高级软卧包厢; pinyin: Gāojí Ruǎnwò or Chinese: 高包; pinyin: Gāobāo) is the top level sleeper that is only provided by a few trains. The ticket is also much more expensive than that of soft sleeper. It only contains two beds in a cabin, and there is an independent toilet in every cabin. Some of them have a shower cubicle in the car.
  Common to high-speed and conventional trains are Standing tickets, these do not entitle the person to a seat and they must stand for the journey. During peak travel seasons, can lead to extreme overcrowding. Ticket holders are assigned to a carriage, on conventional trains it is usually hard seat carriages only, and not permitted in soft seat or sleeper carriages. On High-Speed trains, fewer standing tickets are available and limited to entry vestibules and cafe cars. At stations or from on-board vendors, small folding seats are often sold to allow these passengers to sit in the aisles.
  The fares are different between trains with or without air-conditioning.
  The majority of train tickets in China are thermally printed paper tickets displaying the train's origin and destination, service number, price, date and travel time, accommodation type, class and seat number, as well as a barcode for security checks. Some tickets on the CRH routes such as Nanjing–Shanghai–Hangzhou or Guangzhou–Shenzhen use machine-readable tickets i.e. tickets on the Nanjing–Shanghai route have a magnetically encoded stripe for future use of automatic ticket inspection gates being implemented at major stations along the route, whilst tickets on the Guangzhou–Shenzhen line have embedded RFID microchips which can be read by proximity readers mounted above the ticket gates.
  Most trains feature some kind of on-board catering service. Vendors with trolleys walk through the train selling snacks, drinks, fruit, newspapers etc. On shorter distance trains and many high-speed trains, there is a cafe-car selling light snacks, tea, coffee, beer etc. whilst conventional long-haul trains have full service restaurant cars. At many stations along the route, vendors will sell fruit, prepared food and instant noodles on the platforms during the stops for conventional trains. Hot-water is provided in almost every carriage for passengers to make tea or instant noodles.
  Smoking is generally not permitted in the accommodation or washroom areas of the trains but is allowed in the restaurant/cafe area and in the vestibules between the cars. On modern trains such as CRH or Beijing Suburban railway smoking is completely banned, with some smoke detectors connected to the brakes to stop the train, causing errant smokers facing hefty fines and penalties. On the Guangzhou–Kowloon cross-border train smoking is only permitted in the cafe car.
caption: Blue Style Railway Ticket
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