Some days, the sun doesn’t come up until 10 a.m. or later. People eat lunch after 2 p.m., or even after 4 if they’re not in a rush. The school day stretches so late that children can’t get home in time to catch their favorite cartoon shows.

Why are the clocks in Urumqi, China, so far out of kilter with the cycles of the sun? Because of a legacy of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party’s desire for unified control. Though China is almost as wide as the continental United States, the whole country is officially in just one time zone — Beijing time.

So when it’s 7 a.m. in the Forbidden City, it’s also officially 7 a.m. 2,000 miles to the west in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region — even if the stars are still out there.

That can lead to headaches — and lost sleep. “It’s hard to adjust,” says Gao Li, a sanitation worker in Urumqi. “I often think we must be the only people who eat dinner at midnight.”