Trip to Henan Province: Part Six

Once we were done at the night market, we headed to the train station to kill the last hour or two before we caught the train. Thomas taught us Rummy, and a bunch of the Chinese people were watching us play - partially because we had giant oversized cards, and partially because the rules are apparently very similar to Majiang, which they all play.

Once the train started boarding, we started to get nervous, because we were trying to foreigner our way onto the train. We had bought the tickets in Luoyang, not Kaifeng, so we were supposed to be on the train hours ago, from Luoyang. We pushed our way through all the ticket checkers without problem, but when we got to the train itself, the lady had a bit of a fit, because our tickets said the wrong city. We pushed our way onto the train anyway, and pretended we didn't understand or speak any Chinese at all. Finally, the train started moving, and they were stuck with us.

They found someone who spoke English, and got him to interpret that because we didn't get on in Luoyang, they had sold our beds to someone else. We had no seats on this train, and our tickets were basically invalid. We lied and told them we did get on in Luoyang. They just got bewildered and said "No... you got on in Kaifeng". So we insisted "No, no, that was Luoyang, you guys were 3 hours late!". We had a hard time keeping a straight face, and Jordana and I were grinning like idiots the whole time. Fortunately, grinning in that situation means you're embarassed to the Chinese. So we kept insisting that the bus driver took us to Luoyang, and dropped us off there, that the train was late. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that we had been scammed by the bus driver, and found us beds.

Foreignering our way onto the train took a while, but it worked. It's no wonder Chinese people think white people are so stupid, and that they're so racist. Every time something doesn't go our way, we pretend we don't understand until it's so inconvenient that they just give us what we want. It works every time. We were on our way home.