Something I learned today

 For those who care, the title of this entry is also a song by Husker Du.

What was the something I learned today?  It has to do with time change.  I have been telling my contacts in China about last week’s time change which has lead to discussion of time differences and then ultimately to discussion of time zones

China doesn’t do time zones.  All of China is on Beijing time.  I had often speculated how the people in the west of China dealt with this.  Maybe, a typical work day was 7 to 3 instead of 9 to 5 there. Western China’s situation would be akin to Vancouver operating on Ottawa time.

My student from Urumqi in the Xinjiang territory of China aka Western China aka Turkmenistan told me that there are two times in Xinjiang: the official time (Beijing time) and the unofficial local time, which is two hours different, two hours behind.