Chinese timezones

[Jesper Norgaard Welen]

I have two resources, one is a map with the following 30 regions of China:

Hainan
Hong Kong
Anhui
Zhejiang
Jiangxi
Jiangsu
Jilin
Qinghai
Fujian
Heilongjiang
Henan
Hebei
Hunan
Hubei
Xinjiang
Xizang
Gansu
Guangxi
Guizhou
Liaoning
Nei Mongol
Ningxia
Beijing
Shanghai
Shanxi
Shandong
Shaanxi
Sichuan
Tianjin
Yunnan
Guangdong

The other is a map with around 2800+ counties of China, but I have
absolutely no idea how to combine it to get the corresponding timezones of
tz database (or Shanks and Pottenger, if you like). I can combine the maps
and see which counties lie within a region. I can also copy-paste map
fractions to combine the final timezone map that I want. But I don't have
any information how to combine it apart from the tz database itself, which
has very little detail (Paul, your email was more helpful than the tz
database itself!). So I have a good opportunity to a fine-granularity
approach.

Clearly, it must also be possible to improve the text in the tz database
that defines the timezones, for instance to include Jilin explicitly etc.

I can't help with the changes of chinese administrative boundaries since
1980, or earlier. If the timezones did not follow administrative boundaries,
that will make my task more difficult of course.

I send you a GIF file Gansu.gif within Gansu.zip that contains a screenshot
of a portion of the Gansu region with its counties (many mail programs only
accept zip files and no other types of attachments, for fear of imbeddeded
viruses, trojans etc. Nowadays, you can't even trust your browser!).


> "Zhe Su" <james.su at gmail.com> writes:
>  Actually those are legacy timezones which are not used anymore.

> Paul Eggert writes

> 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.

I guess I forgot to mention that it is the historic timezones that interest
me, while the current division of China in only one timezone is rather
trivial. The idea is to be able to calculate what was the local time in
Harbin or Lishui when it was 10:15:00 GMT 14.th. of August 1941 (as an
example). And no, the answer is surely not 18:15:00!

Regards,
- Jesper
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Gansu.zip
Type: application/x-zip-compressed
Size: 25752 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/attachments/20060627/28846e42/Gansu-0001.zip