Dear John, Many thanks for your illuminating comments. Alas I made a typing error...
>> Compared with their fellows in the easternmost >> 15 degrees, the others are effectively living >> with single, double and quadruple summer time. I meant triple rather than quadruple of course. > This is technically true, but in practice, not an > ideal test. Well, we do have the advantage of a large sample size! > Time is standardized around Beijing... Beijing is about 116 deg. East and 116 is close to 8x15 suggesting Beijing is UTC+8 which I believe it is. Do they have Summer Time in China? I believe not but may be wrong. > I lived in Kunming for two years and I can't say > that it was a problem living on Beijing time. Kunming is about 103 deg. East so you were, in effect, on single summer time relative to Beijing. > ...when I travelled ... to the frontier province > of Xinjiang, Beijing time was noticeably out of > sync with my expectations of when the sun "should" > be shining. Xinjiang is about 88 deg. East so you would be on double summer time relative to Beijing. Surely you don't have to go that far to notice the difference. I thought the sun rose terribly late in Exeter compared with Cambridge :-) > ... Beijing time is used for national schedules, > such as train timetables and government office > hours. So the civil servants have to get up an hour earlier than others? > For everything else, people use "local time," > which is an hour earlier than Beijing time. Er, do you mean *later* than Beijing time? Or do they really get up an hour earlier still? Do they actually set their watches to local time or do they set their watches to Beijing time and live by the sun? > People in Xinjiang are in the habit of ignoring > many government dictates so keeping their own > time is not a big challenge. Hmmm. I too am a great admirer of the Chinese :-) I keep to my own time too! All the best Frank --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
