Time for common sense about time: Look to China

There are many reasons to think about China. For one thing, it has a huge and growing population. It has a huge and growing economy (No. 1 in the world as of last month). It has a huge and growing military. It owns a huge and growing amount of foreign debt, particularly U.S. debt.

But China, for all its huge and growing attributes, has only one time zone.

I didn't know that until last week. I'm not too hot with geography, but I've always imagined that China took up a lot of space on the globe. And it does. Five time zones worth.

But China doesn't have five time zones. It has one time zone. It's called "Beijing time" or "China Standard Time."

And you know what else? China does not -- I repeat, not -- have daylight-saving time.

Nope. The country with the biggest economy and all that other stuff gets by just fine with one time zone all the time.

Yes, that means sunrise is at 10 a.m. in some parts of China. So what? We are so self-centered in the U.S. that we find it odd -- peculiar, even -- that countries south of the equator are enjoying spring flowers and blossoming fruit trees right now. In January it will be blistering hot in Australia.

So if the southern half of the world can have seasons that are backward (the American perspective), then China can spend its time any way it wants to.

Anyone who has read this column for a few years knows I think daylight-saving time is one of the worst ideas ever conceived of. DST is, in my opinion, the spawn of you-know-who. Setting clocks ahead and back every few months is a gross example of wasted national effort.

And, forgive my bluntness here, milk cows don't give a darn what time it is anywhere in the world.

Neither should humans.

My wife had a wonderful aunt and uncle, Della and Alf, who lived a plain and simple life. They never had children. They planted gardens and tended fields all their lives. Alf worked with my father-in-law in his plumbing business. They lived frugally long after the Great Depression, because you never knew when the country's economy might, once again, be plunged into catastrophe. They kept 50 pounds of flour on hand, and they advised my wife and I, newly married, that we should do the same, just in case. They remembered those bread lines in the 1930s.

And Della and Alf never ever changed their clocks to accommodate daylight-saving time.

God's time, they said, was good enough. Year around.

Their world did not tailspin into chaos. No, the rest of the world gave them a chuckle twice a year as everyone else dealt with "spring forward" and "fall back." They followed a simple principle: "Keep your clocks wound up." That's all.

China once had five time zones. It also has dabbled with daylight-saving time. Then it wised up. Out went the time zones. Out went DST. One time. One country. One people.

In China, if you are at work at 9 a.m. and need to call someone all the way across the country, you don't have to worry about when you call. It's 9 a.m. there too.

How many times have you called 1-800 service numbers only to hear a recorded voice tell you operators are on hand from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time? So when is that in Missouri time?

See, the Chinese, who have been around much, much longer than our lot, have a wise and simple approach to keeping time. We should take notice. We should accept that the Chinese are smarter than we are, not just in math and science, but also in keeping track of hours and minutes.

One time zone for America! What's wrong with that? Quite frankly, sleeping until the sun rises at 10 a.m. has considerable appeal.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.