From eggert@twinsun.com Wed Dec 12 19:49:16 2001

CN +3114+12128 Asia/Shanghai east China - Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, etc. CN +4545+12641 Asia/Harbin Heilongjiang CN +2934+10635 Asia/Chongqing central China - Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan, etc. CN +4348+08735 Asia/Urumqi Tibet & most of Xinjiang CN +3929+07559 Asia/Kashgar southwest Xinjiang

This is great. My initial confusion comes from this: All China is really under one official time ("Beijing time" in Chinese), why all those different zones? After looking at glibc/libc/timezone/asia, I realized that zone.tab goes far beyond the current time zone. For it, if two regions historically use different times, they are considered in two time zones, even though they don't have any time difference now. This would certainly help if someone tries to ask, say, what time was it in Beijing at 8pm May 12, 1940 in Chongqing?