The vast majority of Chinese live in what would be two of the four timezones they could have. For the one hour west of Beijing it’s not too bad, probably like Spain and Portugal being in CET.
The rest: Well, it’s not exactly a democracy. But I assume as long as someone answers the phone in the morning, Beijing doesn’t care.
Meh. I’m over being baffled and a little upset about the choice of daylight savings over standard time. I’ve deleted a few of my posts because why bother complaining. Nothing I can say or do would change it. The business class runs this country, and if they want DST (probably because it brings them slightly closer in alignment to European time zones) that’s what we’ll get, whether or not standard time is more popular. Such is life when you live in an oligarchy.
I have a radio clock with the WWW radio receiver and you had to set the timezone for time adjustments. However, it was manufactured before the last DST Change dates, so I had to change the timezone 4 times a year.
I read an article on the idea of staying on DST was tried during the Nixon administration and three months in folks hated it. Especially folks with kids who had to go to school on foot. So there’s problems with this and even staying just on standard time. Frankly, I just think we should abolish it and go on GMT with some local offset for anyone that can’t grasp GMT/UTC.
It’s come up multiple times . My understanding is that the more off-zone parts of China informally follow the “just change your business hours” advice.
I feel like, whatever your stance on changing times or which time to keep, most people can agree that
Changing the clocks sucks
It’s nice to get more afternoon sunlight hours in the afternoon in the summer.
It’s seems intuitively logical that we should just be able to change our working hours, but this is apparently Very Hard, so we legislate everybody changing the actual time as a bizarre hack to trick everyone into doing this.
I personally feel like this could be more rationally solved by the government by
Sticking with Standard Time year-round
Mandating that post offices and other government offices have their hours one hour earlier in the summer.
If a post office’s normal hours are 9-5, in the summer they be 8-4.
This will have the effect of strongly encouraging school systems and private officers to follow suit.
I think it wouldn’t be too hard to get used to. I’ve already internalized that my city’s street cleaning schedule is April to October, for instance. And if you personally want to keep going into the office 9-5, no one is stopping you.
My kid’s school changed their start time just 3 weeks ago. Not even at the new school or calendar - just changed it over a weekend! Changed it for the entire district (20-ish schools). It’s possible.
The primary reason changing the clocks sucks is that it requires people to shift their sleep schedule to one their bodies aren’t used to–a requirement that is largely based on when their employers expect them at work. What you’re proposing amounts to mandating the same clock change we already deal with, but only for government employees, and then hoping that private enterprise duplicates it, which to me sounds like the worst of both worlds.
… Unless you work at a post office or other government office or at a company that decides to follow the government office schedules that you suggest, meaning that under your proposal they’d be required to go to work from 8-4.
. My understanding is that the more off-zone parts of China informally follow the “just change your business hours” advice.
