Zhou Xue glanced at him, then took out a novel and started reading on her own.
The car soon set off.
The vehicle was clearly rather old. Its engine wheezed like an asthmatic who could barely catch his breath, making a "ka-thunk, ka-thunk" sound. Chen Shouyi couldn't help worrying it might break down along the way.
After lying down for about half an hour, he opened his eyes and looked out the window.
Outside was an industrial zone, crowded with chimneys belching great clouds of white smoke.
Pingqiu City wasn't far from Ningzhou. They had already entered Ningzhou's territory.
Compared with the still-desolate Pingqiu City, traffic here had begun to recover, though there were still far fewer cars than before.
"Driver, I heard some factories around here use steam engines?" someone on the bus asked.
"Those factories with smoke coming out of their chimneys? Most of them do!
"Electricity in Ningzhou can only supply residential areas and part of the industrial zone. Most factories have to generate their own power or switch to steam engines and modify their machine tools. I hear the government's offering subsidies for that, and even interest-free loans," the driver said.
"Now that's..." The passenger didn't know how to express his feelings. "I thought it was fake."
"Actually, steam engines aren't bad. Look at thermal power plants and nuclear power plants. Don't they generate electricity with steam turbines? Besides, the steam engines factories use nowadays aren't the same as the old ones.
"They're at least subcritical steam engines. One can drive hundreds, even thousands, of heavy machine tools. Much cheaper than generating your own electricity!"
As a former high school senior, Chen Shouyi had a rough idea of what a subcritical steam engine was.
As water heated and vaporized, increasing the pressure inside a boiler also