Great Leap Forward in time is hours too fast for China's Uighurs

LETTER FROM KASHGAR: Mao Zedong's order that China adopt a single time zone is emblematic of totalitarian government

IT’S 7PM and the wait staff is still huddled around bowls of spicy noodle soup in a popular restaurant, while a cleaner absently runs a mop over the tiled floor.

Normally, restaurants in China are full at this time; some people will already be finishing their meals and leaning back with toothpicks, polishing off bottles of baijiu liquor, or lighting up post-prandial cigarettes.

But this restaurant will not get full for another hour or so, because it is in Kashgar, in the far northwestern province of Xinjiang, where the Muslim Uighur minority observes its own clock, shrugging off Beijing Central Time as an imposition, a chronological inconvenience. The chefs are still chopping and dicing the lamb meat for the region’s famous skewers, and the dough they are whirling into long noodle shapes is for their own dinner, before the evening rush.

When the Republic of China was formed in 1912 under Sun Yat-sen, the Central Observatory in Beijing divided the country into five time zones. In 1949 the communists seized power and Chairman Mao Zedong ordered that the entire country should follow a single time zone, even though China is as wide as the United States and theoretically spans a big enough land mass to include five time zones. A huge statue of Chairman Mao in the centre of town is a clear sign of who is the chief timekeeper in these parts.

For the Uighurs, this was another example of Beijing’s totalitarian rule, a ludicrous imposition that, on the face of it, forces them to get up in the pitch dark and go to sleep before the sun had even set.

Outside the restaurant in Kashgar’s old town, rapidly disappearing to the wrecking ball as central authority is imposed in the shape of modern but bland apartment blocks, workers on the market stalls are only now shutting up shop and contemplating their evening meal, and the sun is still high in the sky.

“Imagine if Los Angeles had the same time as New York, it would be crazy, no?” said one street trader.

Among China’s cities, Kashgar is as far west as you can go. This key staging point on the ancient Silk Road between Asia and Europe is 4,000km from Beijing and is a Central Asian hub en route to the high mountain passes leading to Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

Uighurs are Caucasian in appearance, and speak a Turkic language. The women wear brightly coloured costumes and head scarves, while some of the Uighur women wear burkas and you cannot see their faces. The streets are also home to Kazakhs, Pakistanis, Russians and Uzbeks.

“The Han Chinese are mostly here to guard the borders and to keep an eye on us. If you asked me to describe the relationship, I would say there isn’t really a relationship to speak of. They do what they do and we do what we do,” said one Uighur friend in Beijing, who cannot be named.

When making arrangements with people in Kashgar, you have to be very careful. The clock on an Uighur tour guide’s mobile phone is set two hours behind, while the Han Chinese driver flits between both, saying he will pick me up at 8.30am the next day.

“That’s Beijing time,” he says. “Make sure you get breakfast, because it’s very early in the morning.” There have been periodic efforts over the years by the Beijing government to enforce central time, but generally the use of local time is tolerated, as otherwise people would be getting up in the dark and going home in the early afternoon.

The strange time difference produces a kind of time-lag. Normally, small cities in China like Kashgar, with 400,000 people, are in bed by 10pm, but the streets are still crowded in the city as people perform a kind of passeggiata, as one sees in Italy or Spain. There are plenty of children around, and the atmosphere is very relaxed.

It’s the same thing the next morning – 8.30am is well into rush hour in big cities like Beijing, but Kashgar is still stretching and yawning, and there is little activity worth mentioning. Schoolchildren are still heading to school an hour later.

This is fine in the summer, but in winter it’s essential because the sun doesn’t rise until 10am.

For some, the imposition of Beijing time has been emblematic of the way Han Chinese culture has been imposed on Xinjiang. Ethnic Chinese made up less than 9 per cent of the population at the time of the revolution, and now Uighurs account for nine million of Xinjiang’s population of 19 million.

Uighurs say their children are not being taught their language in schools anymore and that their culture is under threat, just like in Tibet.

In the airport, flight announcements reiterate the fact that the flight time is Beijing time, and one Uighur family, carrying large pots wrapped in scarves, approach the flight desk to get confirmation that their flight will, indeed, leave two hours early.