FW: when did China adopt one time zone?
I'm forwarding this message from Thomas S. Mullaney, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado From: Thomas S. Mullaney [mailto:tsmullaney@stanford.edu] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:55 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: when did China adopt one time zone? Dear Paul, Thanks for your email. The dating of "Beijing Time" is a little tricky, but thanks to Guo Qingsheng, a scholar and engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shaanxi Observatory, we know that the implementation of Beijing Time must have come after September 27, 1949 - the date on which the official name of Beiping (Northern Peace) was changed to Beijing (Northern Capital) - and some time before October 7 - the date of the earliest source which Guo has found containing the term "Beijing Time." This is a project I started thinking about this past summer - a fascinating topic, no? Sincerely, Tom Mullaney In a book review in today's issue of _Science_ you reported that the Chinese government in 1949 opted to observe one time zone. This caught my interest because I help maintain the tz database, which records histories of time zone and daylight saving changes all over the world. The tz database is used by computer clocks all over the world, including what I expect are millions of clocks in China, so I'd like to get the details right. Here's the problem: the tz database, following Shanks & Pottenger (2003), records that the China switched to a single time zone on May 1, 1980, not in 1949. Since you are a historian of China I expect that you have a lot better sources than we do. Can you please mention the sources for the claim that the clocks changed in 1949 rather than in 1980? Thanks for any info you can provide. I'll CC: this message to the tz database mailing list, to give them a heads-up on this query. -- Paul Eggert, UCLA Computer Science Dept. References: Thomas S. Mullaney, Change of time over changing time. Science 319 (5864), 729 (2008-02-08), DOI: 10.1126/science.1152851, <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5864/729a>. Paul Eggert & Arthur David Olson, Sources for time zone and daylight saving time data <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> (2007-12-31); also see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo>. Thomas G. Shanks and Rique Pottenger, The International Atlas (6th edition). San Diego: ACS Publications, Inc. (2003). -- --- Thomas S. Mullaney Assistant Professor Modern Chinese History Department of History Stanford University 450 Serra Mall, Bld 200 Stanford, CA 94305-2024 T (650) 736-8386 F (650) 725-0597
From: Thomas S. Mullaney [mailto:tsmullaney@stanford.edu] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:55
This is a project I started thinking about this past summer - a fascinating topic, no?
Yes, quite addictive.... Perhaps there is a confusion between two different topics here. The tz database is mostly concerned with the actual clock settings; it doesn't record (except in comments) whether the time zone is called "Beijing Time" or "Beiping Time" or something else. Historically, Beijing Time (under whatever name) covered just part of the territory of China; the question the tz database is concerned with is when this was expanded to include the whole country. You can find a map of the old "Beiping Time" (perhaps "Chungyuan Time" is a better name) zone in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China>. What's missing is when that time zone expanded to included the whole country. I just now checked Google News for western news sources that talk about China's single time zone, and couldn't find anything before 1986 talking about China being in one time zone. (That article was: Jim Mann, "A clumsy embrace for another western custom: China on daylight time--sort of", Los Angeles Times, 1986-05-05. By the way, this article confirms the tz database's data claiming that China began observing daylight saving time in 1986.) Obviously this simple search isn't conclusive, as it doesn't include reliable Chinese sources; still, it is not at all clear from the data mentioned above that China switched to a single time zone in 1949.
I think you're combining two subjects that need to treated separately: daylight savings (which, you're correct, wasn't implemented until the 1980s) and the unified time zone centered near Beijing (which was implemented in 1949). Briefly, there was also a "Lhasa Time" in Tibet and "Urumqi Time" in Xinjiang. The first was ceased, and the second eventually recognized (again, in the 1980s). At 11:50 AM -0800 2/11/08, Paul Eggert wrote:
From: Thomas S. Mullaney [mailto:tsmullaney@stanford.edu] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:55
This is a project I started thinking about this past summer - a fascinating topic, no?
Yes, quite addictive....
Perhaps there is a confusion between two different topics here. The tz database is mostly concerned with the actual clock settings; it doesn't record (except in comments) whether the time zone is called "Beijing Time" or "Beiping Time" or something else. Historically, Beijing Time (under whatever name) covered just part of the territory of China; the question the tz database is concerned with is when this was expanded to include the whole country. You can find a map of the old "Beiping Time" (perhaps "Chungyuan Time" is a better name) zone in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China>. What's missing is when that time zone expanded to included the whole country.
I just now checked Google News for western news sources that talk about China's single time zone, and couldn't find anything before 1986 talking about China being in one time zone. (That article was: Jim Mann, "A clumsy embrace for another western custom: China on daylight time--sort of", Los Angeles Times, 1986-05-05. By the way, this article confirms the tz database's data claiming that China began observing daylight saving time in 1986.)
Obviously this simple search isn't conclusive, as it doesn't include reliable Chinese sources; still, it is not at all clear from the data mentioned above that China switched to a single time zone in 1949.
-- --- Thomas S. Mullaney Assistant Professor Modern Chinese History Department of History Stanford University 450 Serra Mall, Bld 200 Stanford, CA 94305-2024 T (650) 736-8386 F (650) 725-0597
participants (3)
-
Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] -
Paul Eggert -
Thomas S. Mullaney