Freedom to travel in China

As international journalists jet in to Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games, Hugh Sykes takes a rather slower route on the overnight train from the west of China.

"What time is it?""Twelve o'clock." "Beijing time or Xinjiang time?" You hear that a lot in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the far west of China, near Pakistan and Afghanistan and Kazakhstan. A long way west, in other words, but officially, it is the same time zone as Beijing in the far east, near North Korea. Imagine the US having the same time zone right across the country, from Miami to Los Angeles. But in hotels and offices in Xinjiang there are sometimes two clocks, because Xinjiang does have its own unofficial time zone, two hours behind Beijing.
This makes sense, it means it gets dark at 2030 not 2230 at this time of year, and light at 0600 not 0800. But it is confusing. "What time is the flight to Urumqi?" "One o'clock." "Beijing time or Xinjiang time?" "Beijing time, of course. Planes and trains stick to Beijing time but buses run on Xinjiang time." "What time do you start school in the morning? "Eight o'clock." "Beijing time or Xinjiang time?" "That depends. If it is a Han Chinese school, it is 0800 Beijing time. If it is a Uighur school, it is 0800 Xinjiang time, which is two hours later. And if it is a mixed school, they stick to Beijing time."