FW: About China time zones

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Walter Korte [mailto:Walter.Korte at tomtom.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 11:15

> Neither Harbin, Shanghai nor Chungking (this is a very strange
> spelling, it is spelled Chongqing in Pinyin) is used in China to
> indicate a time zone.

This is the same as the US.  People in the US also do not say "Denver"
or "Chicago" to denote a time zone.  City names like "Denver" (and
"Harbin") are needed only for proper support of older time stamps,
back when different regions of the country used different rules.

China is similar.  If users don't care about old time stamps,
they can simply set TZ='Asia/Beijing'.

> in practice Xinjiang uses its own time zone so keeping these would be better.

Ouch.  The time zone database says that Xinjiang currently
uses the same time zone as Beijing in practice.  So anyone who sets
TZ='Asia/Urumqi' will get Beijing time for current time stamps.  Do
you know of a reliable source on this topic?