Australia has three time zones, so has the United States of America, just to name two large countries off the top of my head.
Yet, China, which everyone with even just primary school geography would know is a HUGE country, has one time zone. Yes, one.
On the 37-day film shoot in 1988, doing a travelogue documentary following an American motorcyclist across China all the way from Shanghai in the east to S.W. Xinjiang (the bit that’s just north of Pakistan), I came across two episodes that are the outcome of this one-time-zone policy.
The first episode was us arriving at Dunhuang in Xinjiang at 2am instead of 5pm/6pm, after a very long day of motorbike incidents (don’t ask).
I had originally been engaged to act as interpreter on the film shoot, after the film director found that the national guide who was meant to be guide and interpreter was poor in English and even poorer in her work attitude. So, I was approached as a last minute stand-in. Somehow, the role of interpreter then started to include being production assistant (making notes of the timings/locations of the shots, as well as names of the people involved). Once out of the bigger cities like Shanghai and Nanjing, it also became my job to go out and get a crate of beer for the crew once I’d sorted out the hotel room registration and keys.
Back to Dunhuang. It was now 3am — after checking in, and further ado about offloading the motorbike from a lorry whose driver had kindly given it and its owner a lift.
Crate of beer for the crew next. I walked out of the hotel compound. Street in complete darkness, which was the same as when we drove into Dunhuang. I didn’t even know which way out of the hotel compound to go, never mind in the hope of finding a place that was open to buy a crate of beer.
Miraculously (to me), a figure loomed out of the darkness, in the form of a young man (mid-20s?). Never mind what he was doing there, I was just so pleased to see him. Asked him if there was a shop nearby that might be open. (At 3am??)
Another miracle: he said yes.
Miracle 3: he was going there, actually, so he could take me.
About 50 or 100 yards on, we came to a shop. He was right, it was open. And not only open, there were a few men inside who were eating noodles! At 3am!!
Well, not so time-crazy as one might think. As it is all one time zone in China, Dunhuang is officially in the same time slot as Beijing or Shanghai, but geographically, should be a few hours behind. So, to those young men eating noodles in that shop, it was probably only about 10 or 11pm. When I was growing in Singapore, we’d regularly go out to the noodle stall for a 宵夜 xiāo yè (midnight snack), sometimes eaten there, more usually taken home if there was a late night film showing on telly.
They have my sympathy. With China being so huge, with so many things to look after, perhaps the time zone issue is really not worth all the extra bureaucratic hassle. The people just have to adapt to it: work to an official time slot, and carry their respective equivalent local time slot in their heads for their personal life. Why not?
- Googling has produced the fact that Dunhuang is 4,982 miles / 3,096 km from Shanghai; driving distance from Beijing is 1,368 miles / 2,201 km
(Dunhuang, Xinjiang, China, 1988)
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