About Time

Growing up in Indiana, we never observed Daylight Saving's Time. I was actually rather confused what DST meant until I was in my late teens; the first time I ever changed a clock was when I was a college student in South Carolina. Since IN didn't observe DST, instead of changing our clocks, we ended up changing time zones. Half of the year we were on Eastern time and the other half of the year we were on Central time. To make it more confusing, some of the counties in the southeastern part of the state wanted consistently to be on the same time as Cincinnati so they did observe DST and were always on Eastern time; while some of the counties near Chicago in the northwest of the state wanted to consistently be on Central time. (In one of my favorite episodes of the West Wing, Josh, Toby and Donna, who work for the president and are campaigning in Indiana, get stranded in a corn field and end up missing the flight back to D.C. on Air Force One because they crossed a county line in IN and were then in a different time zone.) Finally, a few years ago, after a good amount of local debate about which time zone we Hoosiers were better suited for, Indiana did adopt DST and is on Eastern time year-round (although a few counties by Chicago stay on CST). I've always thought the subject of time zones was rather intriguing. For one of my freshman English papers in college, I wrote a persuasive essay supposedly directed to the governor of IN trying to persuade him to use DST. As a personal side note, once I drove home from South Carolina back to Indiana on the weekend of the time change and since we didn't change time at home, I "gained" an hour going home, but never "lost" it going back . . . does that somehow mean I cheated time and got a free hour?

So after dealing with Indiana time zone schizophrenia my whole life, I moved to China and got another interesting take on time-zones. Just to travel from the U.S. to China, you cross 12 time zones and, upon arrival, force your body to completely rewind its biological clock. The entire country of China, which is bigger than the U.S. and could possibly fall into 5 time zones, operates on the same time--Beijing Standard Time. So whether you're on the east coast or out in Tibet, it's always the same time (thank the Great Helmsman). So, why make such a large country operate on the same time? Probably ostensibly to promote unity, but more likely a subtle reminder of who's in control.

The area of China where the time zone problem is most pronounced is in Xin Jiang province in the far northwest. Xin Jiang, China's largest province, is made up of an ethnic group of Muslims called the Uighers. Over the last few decades, however, Han Chinese have been flooding into Xin Jiang slowly edging out the local population (Xin Jiang, like Tibet, is an "autonomous" region of China and has, at times, made attempts at independence. But, with the absence of a Dalai Lama-type figure, Xin Jiang and the Uighers don't quite get as much international attention as the Tibetans do). Xin Jiang is forced to operate on Beijing Standard Time even though in doing so the sun sometimes doesn't rise until almost 10:00 a.m. or doesn't set until nearly 11:00. The local population has set up its own time which is two hours earlier than Beijing time.

This interesting article highlights some of the problems and results that come from people operating on two different times in the same place.

Clock Square Off in China's Far West

Here are a few excerpts from the article (but you should read the whole thing!):

"Uighurs, the dominant minority in China's northwestern Xinjiang province, balked at running their lives on Beijing time, which would have them getting up in the pitch dark and going to sleep at sunset."

"The separate time zones are in fact a metaphor for the chasm between the Uighurs and Han Chinese living in uneasy proximity in Xinjiang. Since 1949, the ethnic Chinese have grown from 9% to more than 40% of the province's population, and Uighurs accuse the Chinese government of suppressing their culture and faith."

"Schools, government offices, post offices all use Beijing time. So do the airports and railroad stations. Some bus lines use Xinjiang time and others Beijing time. Local people have strangely adjusted. Ali Tash, a 28-year-old tour guide, said it's really quite simple. Pointing at empty sofas in a hotel lobby, he explained how he would set up a hypothetical meeting with a Chinese friend and a Uighur friend. "So I say to the Chinese guy, come at 4 o'clock, and to the Uighur guy, come at 2 o'clock, and then everybody will be there the same time. No problem."

"Unofficially, the Chinese themselves have skewed their working hours, so most schools and many businesses don't actually open until 10 a.m. Beijing time. Abdul Hakim, a Uighur watchmaker in the Kashgar market, said he used to stock a watch that displayed two different times, but nobody bought it. 'People use one time or the other, not both. The Chinese use Beijing time. The Uighurs use our time," he said. "But if somebody buys a watch from me, I'll set it however they like.'"

I visited Xin Jiang back in 2006. The flight home at the end of my trip left at 11:00 a.m. Katie and I wanted to get some breakfast before we flew out. Even though it was 9:00 a.m. when we were leaving to go to the airport, we couldn't buy any breakfast because the people who sold food were just getting up. Too bad we couldn't have had breakfast delivered from Beijing, since people there were obviously awake and open for business.

Maybe Hoosiers and Uighers have a chronological commonality--two time zones, one state.