When I was studying abroad in Taiwan, my friends and I wanted to travel to Hualien by train. We had been abroad for a few weeks and we felt a little more comfortable navigating around, so we decided to go just the four of us, who were all learning Chinese.
Taiwan uses cards that work for navigating all around the city’s public transit, so we thought we could just use our cards to get on the regional train. When there were no seats on the train, we slowly started to realize that we bought the wrong type of tickets.
A nice passenger came to us and tried to explain, but our Chinese wasn’t good enough, so we didn’t understand what she was saying. The only words we understood were “dai maozi” — the person wearing the hat. So everyone who was wearing a hat we became weary of, and hid in a bathroom until we could switch trains. After getting off, we tried to buy a ticket for the next train as it was approaching, and almost got left on the platform as the attendant was counting out our change