Xi'an to Beijing Sleeper Train

Booking flights in China is like booking them anywhere else. Go online, use Travelocity, book your flight. Very efficient.

Long-distant trains, not so much.

While China is updating its network of trains and bringing online some high-tech, high-speed trains, the ticket booking system has a ways to go.

First, unlike airlines, they don’t issue e-tickets. They will only issue paper tickets that they insist be delivered by courier to the hotel where you will be staying in the city from which your train will be departing. This means you have to book your hotel rooms before you can book your train tickets, which is the reverse of the standard order.

Second, train tickets in China only go on sale ten days before the day of use. The work-around is that you can go through a ticket broker. You “buy” your tickets from him several weeks or even months ahead and then the day that your tickets go on sale, he makes the actual purchase on your behalf. The risk is that the broker has your money weeks in advance, with no guarantee that he’ll get your tickets.

Sure enough, that’s what happened. The day after our overnight train tickets from Xi’an to Beijing went on sale, we got an email from the broker saying tickets were not available for the class of seats that we wanted on the day that we requested. In the same email, he mentioned that on the day of our choice the deluxe berths were still available for US$60 more per person. We were already on the road traveling through China at this point with limited email access and the rest of our itinerary –including hotel rooms- was already set. What were we going to do? We bought the more expensive tickets. It threw our budget off kilter to the tune of an extra US$240.

But man, what an upgrade it was.

Rather than staying in a four-person cabin with access to a communal squatty potty, we got two two-person rooms with private baths. They looked like cabins on a cruise ship. They were new, clean, and modern. It completely ruined train travel for my family. I will never get them to travel in economy class again.

Not sure it was worth and extra US$240, but we arrived in Beijing in style and well rested.