Corrections of zone.tab for CN entries

yaoz at vidar.niaaa.nih.gov yaoz at vidar.niaaa.nih.gov
Mon Sep 24 19:56:32 UTC 2001


> From eggert at twinsun.com Mon Sep 24 13:53:11 2001
> 
> > Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 00:25:08 -0400 (EDT)
> > From: <yaoz at vidar.niaaa.nih.gov>
> > 
> > 1. City names are in old form.  Now there is a standard way (pinyin)
> > to write it and it should be used;
> 
> The tz database uses the most common spelling in ordinary English.
> For example, it uses "Rome", even though "Roma" is the correct Italian
> name.  When I first added those entries, the pinyin method was not the
> most common spelling in English, and my impression is that "Chungking"
> and "Kashgar" are still quite commonly used in English, so it's not
> entirely clear to me that the time is right to switch to pinyin.
> (If I'm incorrect about this, please let me know.)
 
I think "Kashgar" or "Kaxgar" is still widely used but "Chungking" is
not.  (I was born in "Chongqing", and have never seen people spell it
like "Chungking" these days, maybe I can find that spelling in historical
books).

It seems to me modern English dictionaries published in US have switched
to pinyin already.

> However, I think it's quite reasonable to support both spellings, and
> so I'll add aliases for the pinyin spellings in my next proposed patch.

That is better.
 
> > 2. Comments are not quite right.  This may due to the historic
> > reasons.  Because of these problems, when users in China are
> > presented a form to pick a time zone, they are very confused.
> 
> How about if we make the following change for now?
> 
> CN	+3114+12128	Asia/Shanghai	most locations
> CN	+4545+12641	Asia/Harbin	Heilongjiang
> CN	+2934+10635	Asia/Chungking	China mountains
> CN	+4348+08735	Asia/Urumqi	Tibet & most of Xinjiang
> CN	+3929+07559	Asia/Kashgar	Eastern Turkestan

The way I submitted to you is following examples of US.  That is
"time - state (province)".  My comments for above are: a. Urumqi
is in Xinjiang so it maybe better say "Xinjiang & Tibet". b. Kashgar
is also in Xinjiang and there is no such region as "Eastern Turkestan".
That region is commonly call "Southern Xinjiang".

It seems to me those entries exists because historically, they are
in different time zones (as you specified in "asia" file).  But
I've seen Linux users in China wondering "Why Shanghai, Harbin, etc.
are picked up but not Beijing or my city?  We always refer to the standard
time as 'Beijing Time' after all.".

> I'm not sure about using the label "Beijing Time" for all of these
> locations.  (Don't people say "China time" more often than "Beijing
> Time"?)  Ideally the five entries would clearly delineate the
> boundaries between the five regions of China that have different time
> zone histories, but I don't have that information to hand right now.
 
On TV, radio, it is always saying "It is now 20' clock Beijing Time."
I haven't heard of "China time" before.

BTW, your 'asia' data file is really interesting.  I've learned a lot
from it.  I've never realized that China has used different time zones
before.  That is why I often get confused when I was travelling in US
at first.  Now I get used to it, I maybe as well get confused again when
I travels back in China.  For example, I may end up have to get up
at 7am in Shanghai, and get up at 11am in Xinjiang.

In 'asia', you are saying before 1980, there are still 5 timezones in
China.  That doesn't seems to be the case to my experience.  My family
lived in Chongqing, Shanghai since 60s.  I don't recall any time zone change.
Let me do some research later.  I have a Chinese Encyclopedia CD somewhere.
I hope I can find more info on this topic.

Thank you very much for your reply.

Best regards,

Yao Zhang



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