How can there be timezones that are a half an hour different?

Question

They're suppose to be only an hour different. Why are some a half an hour different?

Answer 1

Individual countries can set their own time zones and ignore the standard ones. But only a few countries have non-standard time zones.

A small country located toward one side of a time zone will find that the sun isn't overhead when its clocks say noon. This has bothered a few countries -- Iraq, Iran, India, Burma and Venezuela -- enough so that they set their time zone 30 minutes off the standard one in order to make their clocks say noon when the sun was overhead, more or less.

Nepal is even stranger -- it made its time zone 45 minutes off the standard one in order to make its clocks say noon when the sun was exactly overhead.

China is all one time zone, even though it should cover five of them. The sun is overhead in Beijing when the clocks say noon. In the western part of the country, the sun is just rising at noon.