Xinjiang

[Scott Atwood]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Tim Diggins <tim at red56.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm not an expert in this area, but here are my observations from a
> distance FWIW.
>
> It seems like there's a problem with trying to find a "city in the region"
> for the national/official timezone - the region for that is the whole of
> china and the biggest city is Beijing. And according to the article (and
> other journalistic sources), people seem to orient to the "Xinjiang" (local)
> time and "Beijing" time.
>
> On 7 Dec 2009, at 17:46, Eric Muller <emuller at adobe.com> wrote:
>
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/world/defiant-chinese-muslims-keep-their-own-time.html>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/world/defiant-chinese-muslims-keep-their-own-time.html
>
>
> We already have a beijing time (or at least a PRC time). We need a Xinjiang
> time. Why have a Wulumuqi time at all? There is no "separate wulumuqi
> timezone".
>

By the rules of the tz time zone database, Asia/Shanghai (Beijing time),
Asia/Wulumuqi, and Asia/Urumqi could be argued to be all distinct time
zones.  At some point in the past (pre 1949?) presumably all of Xinjiang
used GMT+6.   Sometime after that, Xianjiang split into two time zones, one
that matched Beijing time, and one that continued to use local time.

The tz database only requires distinct time zones for zones which are
distinct at any time after January 1, 1970, so if ethnic Han Chinese in
Xinjiang have followed Beijing time for the entire time from 1970 to the
present, it could be also be argued that Asia/Wulumuqi is superfluous, since
it would only be necessary to distinguish times that predate the tz time
zone cutoff date.

-Scott



-- 
Scott Atwood

The hill isn't in the way, it is the way.
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