Bank Hours

Way back when we were in Urumqi, I did a post on the awkward problem of timezones in China. Despite being the size of the U.S., including Alaska, China has only a single official timezone: Beijing Time. Beijing is in the east of the country. If you were to compare China’s geography to America’s, Beijing would be as far east as Washington D.C. or New York. Where we were at would be comparable to…Seattle. Despite the thousands of miles separating the two places, Xinjiang and Beijing are in the same timezone.

These problems were now a part of our lives. The first day we arrived in Kashgar, the sun rose at 7:50 and set at 10:15, Beijing time. Noon happened at 3:03 in the afternoon, Beijing time. Before, I had assumed that this timezone issue would not really be a problem, more of an annoyance. Time is just an arbitrary numerical system that we overlay onto the natural patterns of light and darkness. Being arbitrary, it should not matter whenever we say noon is. Our lives are lived by lights, not by numbers. If it occurs at the same time in terms of the sun, banks opening at ten in the morning and closing at six in the evening is no different than them opening at eight and closing at four.

I was wrong.

The timezone problem was affecting the way life was lived here. Time is a fundamental part of modern life. When it seems off-kilter, even slightly, you cannot escape the uneasiness.

In Xinjiang, there are two main time systems that are used. Uighurs tend to use the unofficial ‘Xinjiang Time,’ which is two hours behind Beijing time, but the Han Chinese are more likely to use Beijing Time.

This rule is neither hard nor fast. For example, if I am talking to a Uighur who is a Communist, they are likely to use Beijing Time. However, when we talked to these rednecky, Han Chinese truck drivers hauling freight up into the remote mountains around Kashgar, they used Xinjiang Time. This makes things very discombobulating; everyone you talk with, you have to try to calculate what timezone they are thinking in based off the color of their skin and the accent of their Mandarin.

Even more disconcerting, there seems to be a third timezone out in Kashgar. Two posts before, I mentioned how the Sunday Market was dead when we arrived at seven thirty, Xinjiang Time, few stalls were open. The market was dead, except for the men selling ice. I have never been to a market in China that was not bustling at seven thirty in the morning. But here, in one of China’s largest markets, it was dead.

Kashgar is 2,131 miles from Beijing. Noon in Kashgar happens at three o’clock Beijing time. Though people in Kashgar still use the official unofficial ‘Xinjiang Time,’ set two hours behind ‘Beijing Time,’ it appears that many of them live their lives in ‘Kashgar Time,’ three hours behind the official clocks.

We saw this anywhere in Kashgar with Uighur majorities. Kashgar’s Old Town is predominantly Uighur. The first morning we arrived, I went out to find something to eat at nine thirty, Beijing Time, yet little was open in the Old Town. I was eventually able to find some small shops run selling packaged food, but these were all run by Han Chinese. None of the stores I found at nine thirty in the morning were run by Uighurs. To the Uighurs, living on “Kashgar Time,” it was still too early to be going out for breakfast. As I walked farther, I realized that the Chinese part of town was beginning to bustle, because for them, even if it was not nine thirty, it was definitely seven thirty, not six thirty, like it was for the Uighurs.

I find the repression of the state, the center’s imposition of its own time on the periphery, troubling. But what I find most problematic is that these two groups, the Han and the Uighurs of Kashgar, seem to be living in two different times, even as they pass by each other in the street. The Han largely stay loyal to Beijing and its time, meaning they wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier. The Uighurs, more connected with this place, historically and chronologically, instead live their lives in a timezone that sets their noon as noon.

Currently, violence is roiling Xinjiang, with Uighurs unsatisfied about being ruled over by a distant Beijing and feeling their place in their own homeland threatened by Han migrants. How will these problems be solved when, every minute of the day, those Uighurs who feel wronged are reminded that even the minutes themselves betray them?