Depends where you are going or coming from. But normally on these search engines, it doesn't matter which one you choose, they will show all results for all stations. No sure if ctrip is like this though.

Nope, on ctrip you get different results depending on which Suzhou you select.

Else how could you confidently book a ticket 苏州 to 宿州? (Of course, booking that ticket at the station makes for a good test of your Chinese.)

^ Thank you. I magnified my screen and couldn't make out the differences in characters, And then I plugged each into the google translator and got "Suzhou" both times, so that was no help.

I reckon you've got a 50% chance of getting it right

I misread the question . i thought you were asking which train station in Suzhou.
If you need to use Google translate to figure it out, why not just book on an English site?

I'm guessing he used the Chinese site because it is simply better than the English site for train bookings.

No, I was using the English site, and the dropdown options are:

Suzhou (苏州)
Suzhou (宿州)

Exactly written like that - "Suzhou" + the Chinese characters... and I was stumped.

Suzhou (苏州)
Suzhou (宿州)

You'd have to know that the first is the Suzhou in Jiangsu province (the famous one that most visitors would want) and the second is the more obscure Suzhou in Anhui province.

This sort of thing makes ctrip an online sales portal that I don't recommend for visitors located outside China who don't have enough local geographic knowledge (or Chinese character knowledge) to understand the choices in context. As shown here, such a visitor needs help to navigate this correctly. I'd instead recommend using a more overseas-user-friendly site that doesn't have these pitfalls, even if the service fee is slightly higher. www.travelchinaguide.com is reliable, clear, and easy to navigate and provides better assistance if needed.

". . . the fact that ctrip searches are specific for station even in cities with multiple rail stations . . ."

No. Search e.g., "Beijing" to "Shanghai" or "Shanghai" to "Guangzhou." The results are all-stations.

Thanks. Have edited my post above. But I still think that ctrip is not the train booking vehicle of choice for visitors booking from outside China that have no experience.

Hey guys, Ctrip appears to have great fares and am looking at booking a flight with them. However, when i go to book there is a banner at the top saying

Upgrade not permitted; not eligible for mileage accumulation.不可加订婴儿票;最晚24小时出票;

Does that really mean this ticket doesn't earn any miles at all? How can this be?

Yes. That's what it means. If you want to earn miles, you need to buy a more expensive ticket.

I'd like to assume that most of us here have developed decent enough commonsense skills to overcome obstacles like this using intuition alone.

Option A
-75 trains per day
-25 minute duration

Option B
-15 trains per day
-4 hour duration

Odd that the Chinese and English on that banner don't match, the Chinese stating you can't add a children's ticket and that the ticket has to be issued 24 hours in advance.

I'm considering buying international RT J tickets for my wife and myself on Ctrip because the prices are about 20-25% cheaper than buying directly through the airline (likely UA). I know this comes with risks. I just want some assessment from anyone who's dealt with Ctrip before regarding how great the risks and hassles be:

1. Basically, we would use miles to travel SFO-PVG, then buy RT on Ctrip PVG-SFO-PVG. We'd travel on the ticketed date for PVG-SFO, then would change the SFO-PVG date later. Any sense of how much of a hassle this would be, dealing with Ctrip rather than the airline (again, likely UA), and what added charges Ctrip would add in addition to any airline rebooking fee and airline fee for additional ticket cost?
2. Same question as #1, except we might want to change to another destination for the return trip. Could be SFO to somewhere else in Asia, or even somewhere else in the world.
3. Any problems getting seat reservations via Ctrip?
4. I read in one thread here of someone's experience not getting any miles on a trip booked via Ctrip, but now can't find the thread. Any experience with this?

FWIW, the reason I'm even considering this crazy plan is that the RT price is cheap enough that if we didn't end up using the return SFO-PVG portion it might be worth it. But of course, if we could get some value out of the return trip it makes it definitely worth it.

Any thoughts or experience with this? Thanks for any help.