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I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When do

I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When does the sun rise and fall for the western most people?

yuck39 3y ago
I actually liked the one time zone system in China when I lived there. It made scheduling work across different cities a little more convenient, and I didn't mind that the sunrise/sunset didn't always exactly line up to what I am accustomed to.
- ghostpepper 3y ago
  It must lead to some interesting language quirks around times of day. For example in the US/Canada if you say "Nobody wants to get a phone a call at 1AM" that means the same thing to anyone no matter where they're from. "I want you at your desk at 9 o'clock sharp". etc.
- izzydata 3y ago
  I can understand not exactly lining up, but considering how large the country is and how Beijing is so far east it seems like people in the west would have the sun rise at 2:00 or the sunsetting at 14:00. I don't know this for certain I'm just curious how not lined up it can get at the most extremes.
  - jlg23 3y ago
    As long I am not working the same hours as people in the far east of China, I would not really care about what the clock reads at sunset: I'd just get up around sunrise at n o'clock, spend my hours at work and finally go to bed at m o clock. The only difference between n=6, m=22 or n=22,m=14 is habituation. We're used to the former. But it would definitely screw up cultural references, e.g.: a "5pm tea" then can only be understood with a broader cultural context: "UK, 5pm is late in the 2nd half of the working day for them".
throwaway09223 3y ago
Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to discover where the sun is.
- chickenpotpie 3y ago
  Won't people just end up coming up with their own pseudo time zones anyways? If I'm in New York and I'm calling someone in Seattle, aren't I gonna have to just mentally subtract 3 or so hours anyways?
  - loudmax 3y ago
    Yes. There's no getting around the fact that the sun rises and sets around the world at different times. What we do instead is get rid of the assumption that everybody works 9am to 5pm local time. It does require a different way of thinking about time zones. It sounds complicated because it's unfamiliar, but if we ever make the transition, the system would be simpler, less ambiguous, and easier to reason about.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? Your watch hands read '20230710T142847Z', don't they?
  - adolph 3y ago
    No. For one, I use the ordinal date option in ISO 8601 because the whole month and day thing is stupid. Today is 2023-191. Also my watch only reads 14:28 since the date and TZ are typically implied in watches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 One thing for which I would advocate is removing zero based numbering from hours and minutes. Clocks reading 12:15 for 00:15 is tremendously confusing. Most human oriented counting systems are not zero indexed. One indexed series align cardinal and ordinal numbering which reflects the passage of time rather than each hour being nominally disconnected from a sequence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering
RegnisGnaw 3y ago
Officially its called China Standard Time in all the international documents. In local media, its called (in Chinese obviously) "Beijing Time". Its all based on the perspective of Beijing.

yuck39 3y ago

I actually liked the one time zone system in China when I lived there. It made scheduling work across different cities a little more convenient, and I didn't mind that the sunrise/sunset didn't always exactly line up to what I am accustomed to.

ghostpepper 3y ago
It must lead to some interesting language quirks around times of day. For example in the US/Canada if you say "Nobody wants to get a phone a call at 1AM" that means the same thing to anyone no matter where they're from. "I want you at your desk at 9 o'clock sharp". etc.
izzydata 3y ago
I can understand not exactly lining up, but considering how large the country is and how Beijing is so far east it seems like people in the west would have the sun rise at 2:00 or the sunsetting at 14:00. I don't know this for certain I'm just curious how not lined up it can get at the most extremes.
- jlg23 3y ago
  As long I am not working the same hours as people in the far east of China, I would not really care about what the clock reads at sunset: I'd just get up around sunrise at n o'clock, spend my hours at work and finally go to bed at m o clock. The only difference between n=6, m=22 or n=22,m=14 is habituation. We're used to the former. But it would definitely screw up cultural references, e.g.: a "5pm tea" then can only be understood with a broader cultural context: "UK, 5pm is late in the 2nd half of the working day for them".

throwaway09223 3y ago

Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to discover where the sun is.

chickenpotpie 3y ago
Won't people just end up coming up with their own pseudo time zones anyways? If I'm in New York and I'm calling someone in Seattle, aren't I gonna have to just mentally subtract 3 or so hours anyways?
- loudmax 3y ago
  Yes. There's no getting around the fact that the sun rises and sets around the world at different times. What we do instead is get rid of the assumption that everybody works 9am to 5pm local time. It does require a different way of thinking about time zones. It sounds complicated because it's unfamiliar, but if we ever make the transition, the system would be simpler, less ambiguous, and easier to reason about.
ethbr0 3y ago
> Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? Your watch hands read '20230710T142847Z', don't they?
- adolph 3y ago
  No. For one, I use the ordinal date option in ISO 8601 because the whole month and day thing is stupid. Today is 2023-191. Also my watch only reads 14:28 since the date and TZ are typically implied in watches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 One thing for which I would advocate is removing zero based numbering from hours and minutes. Clocks reading 12:15 for 00:15 is tremendously confusing. Most human oriented counting systems are not zero indexed. One indexed series align cardinal and ordinal numbering which reflects the passage of time rather than each hour being nominally disconnected from a sequence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering

RegnisGnaw 3y ago

Officially its called China Standard Time in all the international documents. In local media, its called (in Chinese obviously) "Beijing Time". Its all based on the perspective of Beijing.