[discoverrealchina]

Adding two things that trip people up on the passport side, because the ticket itself is the easy part:

1. Enter the passport name and number exactly as printed. If the booking site rejects your usual name format, use the MRZ order (surname first). A mismatch between the account name and the passport name is the most common reason 12306 refuses to verify you.

2. You do not need to collect anything. The passport is the ticket — tap it at the gate. The exception is a passport without a readable chip, where the gate will refuse and you have to fall back to a staffed window with your booking number.

The step that actually fails for most first-timers is payment, not booking: foreign cards get declined on 12306 unless the card is enabled for overseas online transactions, and some banks block the merchant outright. Trip.com costs a small fee but takes the card that 12306 rejects.

I keep a walkthrough of the registration, passport verification and payment steps at https://discoverrealchina.com/ for anyone who gets stuck at the verification screen.