GTrusted

China has built an extensive, affordable high speed train system which has cut the travel time between most cities while avoiding a lot of the delays associated with airline travel especially when going through big cities like Shanghai.

Unfortunately, unlike other high speed rail networks in places like Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, it's not so easy for foreigners to purchase high speed train tickets using non-China based credit cards. One convenient option to get around this is to use a foreign credit card to purchase a high speed train ticket easily through Ctrip, a very successful China online travel booking platform. Here we purchased our ticket on the Huawei P9.

While buying the tickets on CTrip may be easy, actually picking it up gets a bit trickier. In the Shanghai Train Station at Hongqiao, you need to follow signs for the Self-Service Ticket and find the Self-Service Ticket Office (No. 2).

There you can find a ticket window for passport holders (i.e. foreigners) to pick up your ticket purchased through CTrip by showing the passport you used during the purchase.

Once purchased you can go through the station entrance, go through security, and find your gate.

Once the train is ready to board, you can then line up at the gate and use the ticket to go through the automated gate machine.

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Once you have inserted your ticket through the automated system, you can just find your car and seat on the train platform.

Once on board, the high speed rail can travel at over 300 km/h or about 185 mph, making journeys extremely quick and convenient.

Using CTrip to purchase high speed train tickets is very simple and it's also easy to pick the tickets up in large cities like Shanghai.

In smaller cities, finding the right window to pick up your ticket as a foreigner can be more problematic involving lining up in long queues and asking which ticket window to go through.