Chinese timezones

Paul Eggert eggert at CS.UCLA.EDU
Mon Jun 26 18:12:35 UTC 2006


Jesper Norgaard Welen <jnorgard at prodigy.net.mx> writes:

> * Asia/Harbin seems to cover the Heilongjiang region, no less no more.

It also includes Jilin.

> * Asia/Chongqing is a city lying in the Sichuan province, which is huge, so
> does the timezone represent all of the province?

Yes.  It also includes east Gansu, Guangxi Zhuang, Guizhu, Ningxia
Hui, Sichuan, Yunnan, and perhaps some other areas (I haven't checked
Qinghai yet, for example).

Shanks & Pottenger write that the time zone boundaries did not follow
provincial boundaries: Gansu was split, for example.  This may help to
explain Asia/Urumqi versus Asia/Kashgar versus whatever: I suspect
Xinjiang and Tibet were split though I haven't had the time to find
the boundaries.  Also Inner Mongolia.

> * Asia/Shanghai covers all the rest of China as I understand it.

Yes.

I'll try to pry loose some time and find out more precisely what the
boundaries were, according to Shanks & Pottenger's data.  It's not a
trivial task, I'm afraid.

Which provincial boundaries have moved since 1980?  This knowledge
would help me in my task.  For example,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:China_administrative.png> says
that the Qinghai-Gansu border has moved but gives no details.


"Zhe Su" <james.su at gmail.com> writes:

>  Actually those are legacy timezones which are not used anymore.

Yes, if you don't care about pre-1980 time stamps, then you can use
TZ='Asia/Shanghai', or even TZ='CST-8' on POSIX hosts.

However, if you do care about old time stamps, then Asia/Harbin
etc. are not "legacy", because they have a practical difference for
programs running on today's computers.



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