Why did the giraffe cross the runway?


Once on a flight from Beijing to Shenzhen, my boss decided to instruct our admin to put me on the cheapest flight. I ended up on Southeastern China Airlines (or something like that). We board the flight and are sitting on the runway. The make an announcement in Mandarin and everyone on the plane starts talking at once --- it all seemed very panicky. I don't speak enough Mandarin to follow what just happened. They do make a short announcement in English, which I can't hear because everyone around me is panicking in Mandarin. We sit on the tarmac for four hours while various airline officials get on and off the plane repeatedly. We finally take off and make it safely. I still don't know what exactly the problem was, and I think that I'm probably glad that I couldn't figure out what was going on.