OSKEMEN, Kazakhstan -- December 21 was the shortest day of the year. And in Oskemen, the most easterly of Kazakhstan's major cities, that means the sun now sets around 3:30 p.m. -- an hour sooner than last year -- after a government edict converting the ninth-largest country in the world to a unified time zone entered effect earlier this year.
It has proved one of the most unpopular political decisions in Kazakhstan's 33-year independent history, so much so that authorities might be quietly preparing to reverse it.
"At 6 o'clock in the evening, when our daughter comes home from school, she has no energy left for homework," said Ayan Maqsutov, an Oskemen resident, about the now-darker evenings.
"Teachers say children want to sleep in lessons. Even adults don't want to work after 4 p.m. now," Maqsutov told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service.
Unified Times Zone
Previously, Kazakhstan was divided into two time zones, which officials pushing the change said disrupted people's biological rhythms. A unified time zone, according to officials, would also help businesses across the country to communicate and make it easier to coordinate transportation.
Kazakh cities are getting darker sooner this winter.
Authoritarian Kazakhstan is not the only large country in the world operating on unified time.
India has a unified time zone, set at GMT+5.30.
It lies closer to the equator than Kazakhstan, meaning there's less variation in daylight hours throughout the year, but that has not stopped calls for a dual time zone system there. A system of time zones better accommodates local differences in sunrise and sunset times between eastern and western parts of the country.
In China, GMT+8 is the official unified time zone, and one much better suited to the metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai than western regions.
For Kazakhstan, it is the eastern half of the country that has been dragged an hour west, resulting in evenings with less daylight.
The decision is affecting not only residents of Oskemen but also residents of Kazakhstan's three biggest cities: the capital, Astana; financial hub Almaty; and the southern city of Shymkent.
Opposition To Clock Changes
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has promoted the idea of a "listening state," a concept that means authorities should take on board public opinion.
But when it comes to the clocks changing, officials have been doing the reverse.
In November, Trade and Integration Minister Arman Shakkaliev blamed "individuals without special knowledge" for stirring opposition to the change on social networks.
Shakkaliev and other officials have claimed that science is on their side in the switch, claiming health and economic benefits of the switch. Kazakh Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov said on December 19 that the introduction of unified time was "based on very deep scientific research that was conducted not only in Kazakhstan but also abroad."
Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov
There has been no suggestion that officials are prepared to consider Daylight Savings Time (DST), where clocks are put forward during the spring and go back again in the fall, as a compromise for the east of the country.
Kazakhstan is nearly 3,000 kilometers side-to-side, meaning it could easily have three or four time zones rather than the two it had prior to this year.
Higher electricity bills for longer evenings, compounded by a recent tariff increase, have helped turn confusion into resentment.
Angry citizens repeatedly accuse the government of "stealing light" from them. A recent survey published this month by the Kazakh pollster Demoscope showed 53 percent of Kazakhs are against a unified time zone, with only 22 percent backing the move.
As for authorities' motivation for the change, there are many theories.
Ayan Maqsutov poses with his daughter in Oskemen, eastern Kazakhstan.
Ardak Bukeeva, editor in chief at Forbes.kz and a strong opponent of the change, says officials' admiration of neighboring China might be one factor, even if the two neighbors are now further apart, time-wise.
Even more likely, the move was made for "administrative convenience" and "because they can -- which is what is most annoying," Bukeeva told RFE/RL.
On December 18, a court in Astana rejected a lawsuit filed against the government by a lawyer on behalf of angry residents of East Kazakhstan Province, who were seeking to force a reversal of the decision.
'You Can't Tell Cattle The Clocks Have Changed'
While officials and the judiciary have fallen in line, several lawmakers in the ruling Amanat party have been shifting closer to public sentiment.
In September, lawmaker Maqsat Tolyqbay said the clocks change "was the most frequent question" put to him during a tour of eastern regions.
Almas Tangytuli, a businessman from Oskemen
In East Kazakhstan Province, the sun can now start rising before 3 in the morning, "and people wake up from the mooing of cows," Tolyqbay said.
Earlier this month, another Amanat lawmaker suggested parliament could pass a law to reverse the decision and claimed a majority of the party would support it.
It is unlikely the change would have gone into effect in the first place without Toqaev's approval.
And what if the president decides not to intervene?
In China's Xinjiang region, "Xinjiang time" (GMT+6) has long been informally observed by much of the majority-Muslim territory's population, even if government offices have to work according to official time.
Almas Tangytuli, the owner of a company that produces medovukha, a honey-based alcoholic drink similar to mead, says he is already doing something similar.
After struggling with the new time, he set the clocks at his factory just east of Oskemen forward by a 1 1/5 hour for the sake of his workers, who keep livestock in villages nearby.
"After work, there was no time for them to sort out their barns in the steppe, where there is no lighting. In the morning, their cattle make a rush for the fields. You can't tell cattle that the clocks have changed," Tangytuli told RFE/RL.