Ordinary Gweilo

There was something in the SCMP recently (sorry, I can’t find the reference) suggesting that Hong Kong should introduce "Daylight Saving"  so that people could enjoy the summer evenings more – the idea is that you take some daylight away from the early morning and have it in the evening instead (the UK has done this for more than 80 years).

If you have lived in Hong Kong (or around this part of the world) all your life, it is quite strange to find that in London it is still light after 9pm. in the summer.  Of course, this is only partially because of "Daylight Saving", but it does help.  The flipside is that in winter it can be dark at 4pm (and often cold and wet as well).

The UK uses a different time zone to countries such as France and Germany, but there has been one small piece of standarization – for a long time the UK and the rest of Europe all had "Daylight Saving" in the summer, but starting and ending on different dates (meaning that for a few weeks each year, the UK and France had no time difference, and for a few weeks there was a 2 hour difference).  Now there is a common date for the changeover and a permanent 1 hour difference between the UK and France, Germany, etc.

Mind you, the UK did experiment with British Standard Time ("Daylight Saving" throughout the year), but this was unpopular in places such as Scotland because it meant that it was still dark at 10 a.m. in January. 

Australia seems to have the strangest arrangements – they have three time zones, and in some of them one state will have "Daylight Saving" whereas another will not (Queensland does not, New South Wales does).  How confusing is that, especially on the Gold Coast, most of which is in Queensland whereas the southern part (and the airport, I think) is in NSW.

Of course, there’s no chance at all of Hong Kong introducing "Daylight Saving".  The whole of China and all the way from here to Singapore (apart from Thailand) operates on one common time zone, so it would be crazy for Hong Kong to do anything different.  Plus, there’s no real need.