Editing China (section)

====Buying a train ticket====
Buying yourself a train ticket is not the easiest task. If possible, buy your ticket one or two days in advance. If you go to the train station, the bigger the city, the more you have to be careful of pickpockets, harassers and stalkers who want to sell you all kinds of business (train tickets, hotels, transport, even maybe mei-mei (prostitutes!)). To overcome the problem of train tickets being mass purchased and traded on the black market, when buying tickets you must present a national id card or passport for each person travelling.  
 
At the train station the tickets counters are usually located in a special 'ticket sales hall' or 'center', it is usually just a big hall that's not the departure nor the arrival hall with lots of people queueing.  Also you can buy tickets at official train tickets counters in specific shops in the city.

'''Holiday season:''' If you are travelling around the month of the Chinese New Year, the week of May 1st or the week of October 1st, do book your tickets as many days in advance as is allowed. That's when the entire population of China seems to be taking the train and public transportation to go on holidays, tourism, go home to visit family...etc

'''Online ticket purchase?'''The National Rail Department does not sell train tickets online. There are travel agents who claim that they can assist you to purchase train tickets if you transfer money to them online. However, in our CS-ers experience, there are plenty of online scams that we have heard of - do watch out.  We do not recommend that you purchase train ticket through an online agent unless you do not have any other option.