How many time zones does China have? .. I guess Beijing isn't the first place where its morning there from what I know and see on the map.. right? ... or they have one of those dumb systems where its the same hour all over the country?
i'm pretty sure they use 1 timezone in the whole country, even though the country itself is in multiple timezones.
must suck for those who live in the east, need to get up really early.
That's backed up by this site. China has five time zones but it only uses one standard time. However that quoted explanation doesn't make sense to me, how can China cover five time zones, but the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Province all be in the same time zone?
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/time_difference.htmGeographically, China covers five time zones (Zhongyuan, Longshu, Tibet, Kunlun and Changbai Time Zones). However, the standard times used in Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Province are the same, for they are all in the same time zone (UTC+8), 8 hours ahead of the Universal Time Coordinated.
Geographical timezones are the timezones drawn on a map.
Imagine the earth as a pie, and the pie is divided in 24 roughly equal slices. Every slice is 1 timezone These are the geographical timezone (the 'true' timezone, depending on your location on the world.) This timezone will affect how late you see the sun appear in the sky.
Then there's political timezones, which are usually roughly similar to the geographical timezones, but are decided by the government of the country. Most countries aren't large enough to have multiple timezones, so usually they just use the timezone that they physically occupy. But large countries have to make a choice, do I use different timezones (which makes business and communication more dfficult) or do I use 1 timezone for the entire country? Which makes things easier, but the downside is that the sun can come up very early or very late, depending on where you live. (
For example if you live in the east of china and have to get up at 8 AM, it might actually be 4 AM instead if you would use the true timezone based on your location after loking at the map this is not true, instead it's the other way around, if you live in west-china, than 6 am is like 9 am, so you never have to get up early).
In Europe, most European countries also use the timezone UTC+1 (+2 in summer) even though some of the countries are actually located in UTC timezone if you look at the map. This is purely a political decision.
So basically, even though some countries are located in 1 slice of the pie, they act as if they are located in another slice.
Some countries are so big that they don't fit in 1 slice, so they have to choose if they use multiple slices, or if they just don't cut the slice and call it a bigger slice.
maybe this map makes it a bit clearer.
Look at greenland, it's between -2 and -4 (the lines drawn from the map) but the whole country is -3 (which is somewhere in between).
If you are in the east of greenland, you are actually living in -4 but you count it as if it's -3. So the sun will get up an hour too early compared to the rest of the world, but your clock will say the same no matter where you are in greenland.
you can also see that a lot of countries "cheat" and use a timezone that is not the timezone they should have,m but they do that for political reasons.
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