How to Order Food on a Chinese High-Speed Train: Scan, Pick a Station, Get It at Your Seat

On the seat you will find a QR code for ordering food. Scan it with WeChat: the ⊕ at the top right of the chats screen, then 扫一扫 (sǎo yi sǎo, scan). It opens the food ordering of 铁路12306, China Railway’s own mini program inside WeChat – nothing to install, no account to create.

→Tap ⊕ at the top right of WeChat.

Use WeChat’s own scanner, not the camera app. No code on your seat, or it won’t scan? Search for 铁路12306 in WeChat’s search bar, open the mini program and look for food ordering (订餐) – it starts at the same screen.

The first screen has two fields: 车次 (chē cì), the train number, and 出发日期, the date – 今天 means today. The seat code does not fill in the train number: type it yourself. It is on your ticket and in your booking, a letter and a number such as G803.

→Type our train number, G803, into the 车次 field.

到店自取 (collect at the shop) is a different service: you order from a station shop and pick the food up yourself before boarding. For food at your seat, stay with 开始订餐.

Next comes the timetable of your train, with the time at every station. Tap your boarding station – it gets 起 (qǐ, start) – and the station where you get off, 终 (zhōng, end). Only stations between the two can deliver to you.

✓Tap the station where you get on.

Your trip: Beijing South 15:42 → Wuxi East 21:44

→Then tap 开始订餐.

G803 runs on from Wuxi East; the practice shows the stations as far as Wuxi East, as in our screenshot.

The food is not cooked on the train. It comes from restaurants in a station on your route: they put it on the train when it stops there, and staff bring it to your seat – in our screenshots, 30 minutes after the stop. The strip at the top lists the stations that deliver; only the big ones do.

→Jinan West is greyed out: 已过下单时间, the order deadline has passed. Tap the next station, Xuzhou East.

Order early. A station closes for orders well before the train gets there, and a stop that comes soon after you board may already be closed. Pick a stop near your mealtime: lunch or dinner arrives about half an hour after it.

Xuzhou East had nine restaurants for our train: KFC, McDonald’s and Chinese chains, from beef noodles to rice set meals. Each card shows the rating, monthly sales (月售), average spend per person (人均, ¥37–53 here, ≈ $5.47–7.83), no minimum order (起送¥0), the ¥8 (≈ $1.18) delivery fee (配送¥8) and when the food reaches your seat (19:24送至座位).

→Tap a restaurant to open its menu. We opened five: Yonghe King, Chen Xiang Gui, McDonald’s, KFC and Xinglü (at the bottom).

铁路甄选 marks restaurants picked by the railway, 品牌 a brand-name chain. Set meals made for the train are labelled 乘运款.

The restaurant page works like any delivery app: categories on the left, dishes with photo and price, a + to add. Read the two lines at the top first: 截止下单, the order deadline, and 截止退单, the last time to cancel for a refund.

Interactive: real dishes and prices of 永和大王 at Xuzhou East. Add something with +, then tap 去结算 (checkout). Nothing is actually ordered.

→Tap + next to a dish.

Deadlines at 永和大王: order by 17:54, cancel by 17:24 – the train reaches Xuzhou East at 18:54.

Allergies or no spice? There is a note field on the next screen (订餐备注): write 不要辣 (not spicy) or 不要香菜 (no coriander). To read dish names, take a screenshot and use your phone’s text translation.

Three fields matter. 收餐人姓名: a name for the delivery. 车厢席位: coach and seat, exactly as on your ticket – for example 05车12F号 is coach 5, seat 12F. 收餐人手机号: a mobile number. The code menu offers only +86 (China), +852 (Hong Kong), +853 (Macau) and +886 (Taiwan) – a foreign number won’t work.

→Type a name – your first name is fine.

The bill: food ¥40 (≈ $5.91) + delivery ¥8 (≈ $1.18) + box ¥2.5 (≈ $0.37) = ¥50.5 (≈ $7.46).

Seat letters on a G train’s second class run A B C – aisle – D F; there is no E. A and F are at the window. Changed seats on board? Use the seat you will actually be in.

立即支付 hands you over to WeChat Pay: the amount, what it is for, and your card. Confirm with your six-digit payment password or Face ID. When you start from the 12306 app or Alipay instead, you pay there.

→Tap 确认支付 (confirm payment).

WeChat Pay needs a card linked before the trip – a foreign Visa or Mastercard works. Without WeChat Pay, the trolley that comes through the train sells boxed meals, snacks and drinks.

Now wait in your seat. Staff bring the food at about the time the app promised, straight to the seat you entered – they only call if they can’t find you there. Your order is under 订单 at the bottom of the mini program; until the cancellation deadline you can cancel it there and get your money back.

Your practice order, put together from what you chose. The real one is listed under 订单 in the mini program.

Train late, or you changed trains? Cancel under 订单 before the deadline. After it, call the 12306 food hotline on the start screen, 400 881 2306 – in Chinese.