Foreign woman takes another's seat on high-speed train

A foreign woman who took another passenger's seat on a high-speed train and splashed water to onlookers capturing the scene on video eventually returned the seat and apologized for her behavior, China Railway Shanghai Bureau said Monday night.

The K8482 train departed from Shanghai for Fuyang, East China's Anhui province, at about 11 pm on Sunday. After getting on the train, the foreign woman sat in another passenger's seat and refused to move when the passenger arrived, according to video footage published by witnesses, which has been going viral online.

At first, the passenger thought the foreign woman couldn't understand Chinese, so others helped by translating the conversation into English. But she didn't respond until the conductor arrived. She was quoted as saying, "Wo Bu Guan (I don't care)" in Chinese, by the Shanghai-based Jiefang Daily.

When the woman found other passengers were taking videos, she splashed them with a bottle of mineral water. The conductor then brought the woman to the dining car. She returned about 30 minutes later and made her apologies to both the passenger from whom she took the seat and those whom she splashed with water.

Bad behavior on high-speed trains has been getting much public attention since January, when a woman who impeded a train's departure by blocking a door sparked extensive discussion on how to regulate public behavior. That woman attempted to delay the train's departure to let her husband board the train after he was denied entry as the gate was already closed.

In response, the railway authority has released a guideline for dealing with troublesome passengers, which took effect on May 1.

Last week, a woman was fined 200 yuan ($29) and banned from train travel for 180 days after she took another passenger's seat and refused to vacate it on a train traveling from Yongzhou, Central China's Hunan province, to Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province.