If you look at a map of the world showing time zones, you see that all of China, bigger than the United States, uses a single time zone. I’ve often wondered how much of an inconvenience this is for people living in the far western reaches. It would be like running California on New York time (which would not be entirely without benefit, as that way we would have gotten to see some notorious moments on live TV that normally get censored out before we see them).
Granted, most people in Western China live rural lives and probably don’t usually care what the clock says, but what about people who live in cities? If they work a typical shift, like from 8 to 5, but have to go by Peking time, then astronomically it could be a 5 to 2 shift based on their longitude. Do they put up with this in the far west, or do they favor a really “late” schedule to compensate, so they can complete their daily activities in daylight?
Having chatted with a few people who have worked out that way the simple solutions is, they wake up, have their morning marmite on toast (or local equiv.) and go to work pretty much in line with the sun doing likewise. The fact that Bejing has been awake and active for a fair few hours before hand and the clocks hands are indicating that only students and todlers post mid afternon nap should be waking up is largly irrelevent.
The people in question were looking at oil wells that, ordinarily, would take a couple of weeks to get down, but said wells were entering their sencond year of drilling. This may indicate that life is some what relaxed over there. The office staff of the local regional oil company followed the sun rise and set rather than mandated bejing time.
Need a cite, sorry, just from conversation with folks who went there. Oddly enough not far over teh border from Almaty in Kazakstan there are a fair few large cities, nothing to compare to the costal regions, but not insignificant places.
cheers
NBC
Yeah, pretty much what NaturalBlondChap said. Some places make a distinction between “local time” and “Beijing time.” But life pretty much runs according to daylight hours, and is so marked on stores (we open at 11 or whatever), rather than abiding by Beijing’s work schedule.
This is secondhand, but the way I heard it was that the local officials - who are mostly Han - work to Beijing time and everybody else works to what the time would be if there were timezones.
Lhasa is the furthest west I’ve been (and it got dark at midnight and stars were out at 8:00 am). Locals follow the sun and local time. Officials and such seemed to me to follow local time but paid lip service to Beijing.
No different than when I have to get on a 5:00 am call because some New York jag off gets their panties in a twist. (No offense against New Yorkers in general, but IMHO they are the worst when it comes to wanting the world to revolve around their 9-5 schedules and commutes.)
I’ve often wished the whole world would get on one time zone. Time is artbitrary. The sun only rises at 7 a.m. because WE say it’s now 7 a.m. People could adjust to the idea of the sun rising at 2 a.m., starting work at 4 a.m., going home at noon, going to bed at 4 p.m.
It depends on whether you include the area of places like Puerto Rico, Guam, etc. It’s remarkably similar in terms of latitude and it’s extent west to east (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). Here is a quote from an unfinished book I am working on: