But why there are Harbin and other cities? Those cities are using the same timezone UTC+8, isn't it?
The others are distinguished because at some time in the past, there was some point at which they differed in time. So in this case, Asia/Shanghai differed from Asia/Harbin on 1980‑04‑30 15:29Z (8.5 vs. 8). See http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/locale/docs/design/formatting... (now slightly out of date). Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: "Funda Wang" <fundawang@gmail.com> To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> Cc: "Paul Eggert" <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU>; "Tz (tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov)" <tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov> Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 15:09 Subject: Re[4]: Corrections to timezone database
Mark> The name for that tzid may vary by language, and it should be the most Mark> customary form for that language (or even country). Sure. Then, "Beijing Time" is the most commonly used in China, no matter how crowded Shanghai is.
Mark> It is a bit like arguing that CN should not be the official ISO 3166 country Mark> code for China, because it is not an acronym for the Chinese name for the Mark> country. But we have zh_CN as an acceptable choices.
Mark> If Shanghai and Beijing ever had different timezone behavior, that would Mark> warrant having a different tzid; otherwise it doesn't. But why there are Harbin and other cities? Those cities are using the same timezone UTC+8, isn't it? AFAIK, Beijing is more crowded than Harbin or Chongqing. And, although Urmuqi is located in UTC+7 timezone, the official timezone of Xinjiang is UTC+8 - Beijing Time.