With the Chunyun or annual Spring Festival Travel Season just about over, the railway authorities have some a few new tracks to set... reservation-wise. Everyone knows that getting a train ticket early is the new order of the day. Your Beijingologist knows that too soon — being the bearer, right now already, of Sunday tickets to Shijiazhuang and back. (We swear: he's not going to be the Shijiazhuangologist anytime soon...)

If you're travelling by direct Z series trains, CRH trains with a D prefix or the S2 line up to Badaling, you can book tickets 21 days in advance as of 09:00. This is good today already. It'll be OK, by the way, if you rush to a Beijing railway station close to you to get your S2 tickets (or D or Z train tickets) for March 24...

...and if you're travelling by any other train, that'll be 11 days instead of 21 days. The same holds for that 332 km/h wonder known as the Beijing-Tianjin High Speed Train.

By the way, there's no need to go to Beijing West to buy tickets leaving from that station only; most Beijing railway stations are networked, meaning that it's pretty much OK to get these tickets from Beijing North (as an example). Which doesn't mean you should see more laowais at Beijing North...

...with the sole exception... if we tell you this: queues there are remarkably short...