Coming back from Qinghai Lake, we were running low on gas. And by “gas” I mean actual gas, because the driver’s car ran on natural gas. Or so I thought.
At the start of our journey in Xining, we had filled up his car at a natural gas pumping station. When I asked about it, my driver told me that most of the business vehicles in Xining run on natural gas.
Out in the middle of nowhere, we got off the highway and pulled behind a long line of cars at the filling station. I mean really long. 1970s Carter-era oil embargo long. There were two pumps and I clocked the speed of fill-ups at about five minutes per car. We were going to be here forever.
My driver parked the car and got out to smoke & chat with the other drivers. We were still in the middle of nowhere, so I didn’t have an internet connection, so I just tried to rest my eyes. Every five minutes, my driver would pull the car up another car length.
We did this for about half an hour.
I heard raised voices. My driver was arguing with someone but I couldn’t tell who. Abruptly, he got into the car and we sped off. I tried to suss out what was wrong but all I picked up something about 压力 (yālì) which means “pressure” or “stress.” Was he stressed out? Did he have an argument?
We pulled into another filling station, but this one was for gasoline, not natural gas. We pulled in the wrong direction. There was arguing. We pulled around the other way and got stuck behind a long line of cars. (Even longer since the pumps alternated between filling cars and filling walkup customer’s gas canisters.) Finally — about an hour after we had pulled off the highway — we had a full tank and got back on the road.
I had some questions for my driver.
“Your car can use natural gas or gasoline?” “Yes.”
“The first place had low gas pressure?” “Yes.”
“So it was taking too long for each car to fill up?” “Yes.”
“So you decided to get gasoline instead?” “Yes.”
Mystery solved.