Uyghur Time

I think the guys who helped me move last week were Uyghurs.  Or Kazakhs, maybe.  Three of the four of them, anyway, definitely looked Central Asian to me, rather than Han Chinese.  And they muttered to each other in a lingo I didn't even vaguely recognise.  And when I apologised for not knowing much Mandarin, one of them said, "Me neither." One of the many petty crazinesses that the Chinese Communist Party foists upon this poor country is the arrogant insistence that everything must run on Beijing time.  In the far western province of Xinjiang, where the Uyghurs come from, the actual cycle of day and night is a good 2.5 or 3 hours off from that (maybe even 4?  I don't have Wikipedia available to check it at the moment); if they kept Beijing office hours, they'd be getting up when it was still pitch dark.  So, in practice, everybody gets up and works at a more sensible time; but, according to the clocks, they're being rather lackadaisically tardy about everything.  Lying in bed till 9 or 10 every morning?  Disgraceful! It's a small act of rebellion that I've always found rather charming and inspiring. However, the phrase "Uyghur time" also tends to carry a disparaging connotation that these chaps have a more general problem of being slow-moving and unreliable.  The Uyghur musicians I know in Beijing do seem to be particularly bad at turning up for gigs on time, but I wouldn't like to extrapolate too much from that.  Anyway, even if there is some truth to the accusation, I'd prefer to think that, rather than just being lazy or lacking in forethought, they have cultivated a magnificent indifference to the concept of time: they're not tardy, just unhurried. My Uyghur removal boys, though, were threatening to undermine my efforts to put a positive spin on their reputation for flawed time-keeping.  I was on a pretty tight timetable that day (trying to move on Thanksgiving - what was I thinking?!), and when they still hadn't shown up nearly an hour after they were supposed to, I began getting anxious.  All the more so, because they had allegedly been on my street only half an hour late, but couldn't find my address (it's not hard); even when they were only 6 doors down from me!! Even after arrival, they were worryingly slow to get started; but once they got a head of steam up, they did a brisk and efficient job, and I lobbed them a bit of extra cash for their efforts. I'd like to visit Xinjiang one day.  Indeed, I'm tempted to move there permanently.  It's my 'Lawrence of Arabia' fantasy….