networking - OpenVPN connection through SSH tunnel

I'm currently visiting China, so I have some options for VPNs set up. However, my VPN servers have a habit of suddenly disappearing from the network after I've used them for a while.

I thought it might be an option to use an SSH tunnel to another server, and to connect the VPN through that, to prevent the VPN traffic from being detected. That way, presumbly, the traffic just reads as an SSH connection to the provider.

So, I connect to a server like this:

ssh peter@some-server -L 4444:vpn-server:1194 -N

And then add this to my openvpn client configuration:

remote localhost 1194

Sadly, this doesn't work. The connection authenticates, but afterwards, I can't connect to either the inside of the VPN (ping 10.8.0.1) or the outside (ping 8.8.8.8). Should this work, or am I misunderstanding something?

Is there some iptables nat rule I should add? The only nat rule I've added so far is:

-A POSTROUTING -s 10.8.0.0/24 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE