It is absolutely nuts over here- a country nearly exactly the same size as the US, with only 1 time zone (decreed by Mao in the late 40's as a push for "national unity," fer God's sake)... Imagine if LA, SF and west coast had to be on the same time as NYC- what a mess. Fortunately, in HK we have our own time, but are directly south of Beijing, so it doesn't really matter. But man, would it suck to be in the west. They've tried it a few times, but it just led to chaos, as each province and sometimes cities just went on their own time. Wiki- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China