Sunday, March 15, 2009

ap·pre·ci·ate


One of the things that I appreciate about Canada is daylight savings time. (The "spring forward" part of it anyways.) The end of winter is always kinda nebulous, and that extra hour really kicks it into spring...there's always a kind of a "worst is over" kind of feeling.

But anyways, there is no daylight savings time in China. In fact, there's no time changing anywhere anytime in this Country. Physically, China is almost 4 time zones wide . But the entire thing runs under Beijing time. It makes things a little more uniform, but it also makes for a couple weird quirks.

For one, when I visited Yunnan (2 time zones away) in February, the sun rose at around 7:30 every day...that was nice.  You could wake up at a reasonable time every day at daybreak and feel like a champion.

On the other hand though, 3 hours makes things a real hassle if you live in the westernmost parts of China.  Xinjiang, the province in the NW corner of the country, has actually adopted an unofficial "Xinjiang time", three hours behind Beijing time.  So if you're ever traveling around there and booking train tickets or whatnot, you really got double check and be sure whether the time you're getting quoted is in Beijing or Xinjiang time.  (P.S. Xinjiang also kind of wants out of China so the whole "having our own time zone" thing is also another way to shove it in the government's face.)

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