Originally Posted by
largedog
From what I've read, high speed rail has gone fully paperless and there are no more printed tickets for "G" and "D" trains. You buy a ticket linked to your passport/ID number and scan your passport at the "manual" gate to enter the station/platform. I will try it out next month.
Yes, this is correct. If you still need a printed ticket receipt this can collected from a machine or a ticket counter. It was the case though (at least when the new system started) that for the first trip using a given passport number it was necessary to go to a ticket counter to get the number activated/validated in their system. After that just showing scanning a passport at the gates should work.
I don't know if buying through Ctrip gets around this, but better to leave some extra time just in case if you go down this route. If you buy the train ticket through an agent with a "12306" terminal (the central trainticket booking system) this also takes care of the validation.