Last updated: 4 November 2026
Direct answer. The 12306 English site sells, endorses and refunds tickets and handles destination changes. Sales and endorsements run 05:00 to 01:00 the next day, and until 23:30 on Tuesdays; queries and refunds run around the clock. Only foreign passports are accepted, and an itinerary sheet is not a ticket.
The four services 12306's English site runs, its real opening hours, why only foreign passports are accepted, and what the confirmation paperwork is not.
Most guides to Chinese rail travel describe the journey. Fewer describe the counter you are actually standing at: a booking site with a narrow document rule, a closing time in the middle of the night, and a confirmation email that station staff will not accept as a ticket. Those three details cause more failed trips than seat selection does, and all three are written down in the ticketing FAQ that China Railway publishes in English.
The FAQ answers the capability question directly: 12306.cn's English site offers purchase, endorsement, refund and change of destination. That list is worth reading as a boundary rather than a feature set. It is the complete public statement of what the English-language interface is for.
Two consequences follow. First, everything a passenger needs after buying — moving a date, moving a station within the same city, cancelling — has an English-language path. Second, the site is not a travel agency: it does not assemble itineraries, hold seats while you decide, or sell anything beyond the rail ticket itself. Anything a traveller wants bundled with the ticket has to be bought somewhere else.
The step-by-step flow of a purchase is covered in our booking walkthrough; this page is about the limits you meet after the flow starts.
This is the detail that quietly breaks plans made from a different time zone. China Railway's own answer splits the service day in two:
| Service | Available |
|---|---|
| Information query | 24 hours a day |
| Ticket refund | 24 hours a day |
| Ticket purchase | 05:00 to 01:00 the next day; 05:00 to 23:30 on Tuesdays |
| Endorsement | 05:00 to 01:00 the next day; 05:00 to 23:30 on Tuesdays |
Read that Tuesday window carefully. The nightly maintenance gap is longer on the first working day of the week, so a purchase or a change attempted late on a Tuesday evening in China has no window at all, while the same attempt on any other night would have succeeded before 01:00. For a traveller booking from Europe or North America, the practical rule is that the site is awake when China is awake, with one hour of slack after midnight and none on Tuesday night.
Refunds are the exception, which is a small mercy: cancelling is possible while sales are not. The refund procedure itself — who may collect the money, and the windows that apply — is set out in our refund guide, because those rules are about the money rather than the interface.
The English site accepts exactly one class of identity document: a valid foreign passport usable under the relevant regulations. Not a residence permit, not a driver's licence, not a photograph of a passport page. If the document is a foreign passport, the site is the right place to buy; if it is anything else, the English interface is the wrong tool and the station counter is the right one.
There is a second gate that catches people who did everything correctly. A passenger can sit in the booking list marked "to be verified". In that state a ticket can be bought, but the passenger cannot simply board: the FAQ says the original passport used for the purchase must be taken to the station's ticket counter for identity verification, and only once the status has moved to "ready to be verified" can the paper ticket be collected.
Two things follow from that wording. The verification is done with the original document — a copy does not discharge it. And the status has two named states, so a passenger who checks the booking list and sees an unfamiliar label has a specific question to ask at the counter rather than a general worry.
The site lets a buyer print or download an itinerary sheet, online or from designated counters and automatic machines at stations. It is a useful record, and it is frequently mistaken for the thing that gets you through the gate.
The FAQ is blunt about it: neither the itinerary sheet nor a reimbursement receipt can be used as a ticket. They document a purchase; they do not authorise travel. Boarding is governed by the e-ticket record and the identity document attached to it, which is why the document rule above matters twice — once at purchase, once at the gate. Our e-ticket explainer covers how the electronic record and the paper trail differ in daily use.
Three situations send a passenger to a counter, and it helps to know them before standing in the wrong queue:
A fourth limit is worth stating because it is easy to trip over: one valid ID buys only one ticket for the same train on the same date. That is a cap on duplication, not a cap on travel — but it does mean a family cannot use one passport to hold two seats on the same departure.
Children's fares sit outside this page on purpose: the age and height rules, the free-child allowance and the single-adult limit are a subject of their own, covered in our child ticket guide. Seat classes and what the fare buys are in the seat class guide, and what happens to a ticket you miss is in the validity guide.
A booking site's limits are usually invisible until they cost something. Here they cost three specific things: a purchase attempted in the wrong hour, a boarding refused because the passenger was never verified, and a printout treated as a ticket. Each has a documented fix, and each fix is cheaper before the trip than at the station.
The English interface is a genuinely complete path for a foreign-passport holder — purchase, change, refund, destination change, all in English, all with the same document. It is simply not an unlimited one, and the limits are published. Reading them once is the difference between using the site and arguing with it.
No. Information queries and refunds are available around the clock, but ticket sales and endorsements run from 05:00 to 01:00 the next day, and only until 23:30 on Tuesdays.
No. The English site accepts valid foreign passports usable under the relevant regulations, and nothing else. Other document types are handled at station counters.
The passenger's identity has not yet been checked. Take the original passport used to buy the ticket to the station ticket counter; once the status changes to "ready to be verified", the paper ticket can be collected.
No. China Railway states that neither document can be used as a ticket. They record a purchase; the e-ticket record and the matching identity document govern boarding.
No. One valid ID can buy only one ticket for the same train on the same date of travel. The exception in the FAQ concerns child tickets bought under an accompanying adult's identity information.
All sources retrieved 4 November 2026. This page is an independent reading of the sources listed; the official pages themselves are the specification.
| Fact used on this page | Source |
|---|---|
| Real-name ticketing; foreign passengers may buy with valid passports — China Railway 12306 English FAQ, ticketing section Q1 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| English site provides purchase, endorsement, refund and change of destination — 12306 English FAQ, Q7 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| Queries and refunds 24h; sales and endorsement 05:00-01:00, Tuesday 05:00-23:30 — 12306 English FAQ, Q8 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| Only valid foreign passports accepted on the English site — 12306 English FAQ, Q9 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| Itinerary sheet printing and download channels — 12306 English FAQ, Q10 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| Itinerary sheet and reimbursement receipt cannot be used as tickets — 12306 English FAQ, Q11 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| "To be verified" passenger must present original passport; then "ready to be verified" — 12306 English FAQ, Q12 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |
| One valid ID, one ticket per train per date — 12306 English FAQ, Q6 | Retrieved 4 November 2026 https://www.12306.cn/en/faq.html |