Scheduling to Talk to China

Scheduling with China
Figuring out a time to connect can be difficult when you’re practicing Chinese. China is fifteen hours ahead of California. Another way to think about this is that it’s nine hours earlier, but the next day. China does not have daylight savings time, so this shifts depending on the time of year. When the days are shorter, China is sixteen hours ahead of California or you can think about it as eight hours earlier.

For about eight months of the year, California is fifteen hours ahead. I’ll include ~November -March (16 hours ahead) in parentheses.

Essentially people are waking up in China at about 7:00 AM. That’s 4:00 (3:00) in the afternoon in California. If you have a job that you work during the day, you may not be trying to practice Chinese earlier than that. However….. People in China are also tending to work or go to class. So whether it’s for paid lessons or connecting with language exchange partners, you’ll have to keep the time difference in mind much of the time. Occasionally you will find people in Canada, the UK, or the US that want to practice English, but not as many as are in China.

3:00 PM in China is midnight (11:00) in California, 5:00 PM in China is 2:00 (1:00) AM.

7:00 AM in California is 10:00 (11:00) PM in China.

If you talk to students, they may have breaks during the day.

Basically though, you need to plan ahead to connect with people in China. Very early morning, California time, can work and/or afternoon/evening and potentially late night. Depends on schedules.

Keep that in mind and ask about schedules. It’s possible that you really can’t talk to some people easily during the week and you will need to use the weekend.

Remembering/looking up the difference
If you are practicing Chinese with people in China quite a bit, you will probably need to look up the time difference at least a few times, but after that you will likely start to remember it.

You can always type in “time in China” into Google and Google will tell you.

With HelloTalk, the app will tell you the local time of other people.