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I bought train tickets before we left through www.china-diy-travel.com . Very easy to navigate their website. From what I can tell, they take your order and then buy the tickets directly with the train system in China. They looked over our order and offered advice on how our names should be entered for smoother processing when picking up the tickets at the station in China. They also provided full printed instructions in Chinese for the taxi driver to take us to the proper train station and for the ticket counter when picking up tickets. Very well thought out and anyone who does not speak Chinese could navigate the train experience with confidence.

It turns out that I brought a Mandarin speaker with me and although we had never used the trains in China, we didn't need to use the printed instructions. The only snafu we had was that we ate for too long at our first station and missed the train. Oops. It wasn't a problem though. They let you change your ticket at least one time if needed. We simply took the later train. This knowledge came in handy when we needed more time in Zhengzhou. We simply showed up a bit late to the station and exchanged our tickets. There was also a printed instruction for missing your train as well. I believe it says to put you on the next train.

All this help from China DIY Travel for for a service fee of $5 a ticket. Well worth it in my opinion.

I should mention that we did not take the train to the Great Wall. We hired a private car and driver (Audi A6 and a very nice english speaking driver). For the entire day, the fee was 900 Yuan. Less than US$200. We visited the wall at Mutianyu. The drive was only 1 hour vs about 3 hours if we were to take public transportation.

Zeug