does buying train tickets require checking id?

[liuzhou]

If they didn't tell you to get a copy, that's very interesting.

Be interested then. They never mentioned copies.

[panpan86]

True but this law affects everyone. As a foreigner you probably get a lot more leeway than I would and even more than a native chinese citizen.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. The law is definitely there but there is a great deal of flexibility in terms of how hard they enforce it. This is exactly why 'crackdowns' exist - often the law has always been there, it just hasn't really been enforced. Out of interest, do you carry a Chinese ID card?

Wow, a local PSB advising you to not carry your passport? That's the funniest thing I've heard, and it sounds like a pretty cool local PSB. (You mean 派出所 not 出入境 right? If your local 出入境 went around telling stuff like that... just @_@) Their advice is probably sound; although I've never been through the process, I am almost sure that the process you go through when you lose your passport is much worse than the slap on the wrist you get if you get caught without a passport.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were told one thing and Liuzhou was told another. Local governments and departments may interpret the same law differently and enforce it to varying degrees.

[shinewind]

As you check the whole story you’ll know this ID for ticket thing all starts with the big population. It’s a tough job getting train ticket, especially during vacation seasons. Long queue waiting outside the booking office? Common sight. Very soon some "business men" start buying & selling tickets (at a higher rate of course) and pocket the difference as their profit. Government come up with this idea of ID-on-ticket thing trying to remove such business.

[变形金刚]

To be fair ID is required for most train travel in the USA too, although the reason for this stems more from paranoia about terrorism than concerns about scalping. The guy in the video is Canadian... I wonder what the situation is there

[Takeshi]

But I thought in the "land of the free" you don't need to carry ID with you. -_-

[变形金刚]

Haha, that is debatable. For example there is a lot of controversy over "stop and frisk" tactics used in New York City right now, which involves police going to poor neighborhoods to check IDs, ask prying questions, and search people for no reason. Last year almost 700,000 of these stops were conducted. This has had the effect of causing many of the people in those areas to feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods and lose trust in the police...some more information in the links below

http://www.capitalne...ouncil-employee

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

http://www.msnbc.msn...t/#.T5D34bOiFLc

http://www.nyclu.org...frisk-practices

[Flying Pigeon]

"You only have to show IDs on D/G/C trains.

Regular trains like T/K/Z/number only trains do not require ID.

The rules are enforced consistently. "

Well that's very interesting, but it isn't true. My wife just bought a K ticket and had to show her ID card. When I bought our K tickets during Spring Festival, I had to show my passport. All tickets were purchased in the city of consistently enforced rules, Beijing.

[xiaoxiaocao]

I was under the impression that all tickets required ID. Every time I've bought tickets over the past few months it has been required regardless of train. Either the rules are not enforced in some cities, or its been a long time since some of the posters in this thread have caught a train in China.

One of my staff (Chinese) bought tickets for a T train yesterday and was asked for ID.

Edited April 21, 2012 at 09:14 AM by xiaoxiaocao

[yialanliu]

Hmm, guess it's not consistent then. Just came back from Yiwu today and no ID required once again. Although as an aside, never going to take K/T trains for short distances when buses are so much faster haha.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Yes!

It does. At least of Oct/Nov 2013.

I've taken a few trains recently in China and my passport was required no matter for which train type, and even the K train for 18 Yuan that I took from small town A to small town B has my passport number printed on it (and not a random number, as some suggested earlier on here)

[roddy]

After you've bought the ticket, how often / carefully is it checked against your passport? On entry to the station, boarding, during on-board ticket checks, when buying a processed sausage, etc?

[Ruben von Zwack]

I'll have to pass on that one, I always brought my own pre-purchased Noodle Soups on the train!
 

But outside the train station before you can enter, and I think it was carefully checked because those queues were really long most of the time. Other than that - on the train itself, and on leaving the train station, just the ticket was checked, if my memory serves me right.

[Botterli]

From 凯里 to 贵阳 we traveled with the wrong passport number (they typed down the visa number, the computer didn't react either). No-one noticed. That time.