Question for Asians and their flags

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am organizing a gay pride parade float here in San Diego for the local chapter of the Long Yang Club, an international social group that brings Asian and Caucasian gay men together. (OK, it’s where us rice queens go looking for potato queens, but that’s not important right now.)

In an attempt to be more than just cute boys on a float, we’re trying to add a little splash of culture. One of the things we’re doing is hanging from the sides of the float different national flags from eastern Asian countries - China, Japan, Philippines, etc., as well as the U.S. flag and the rainbow flag.

Some questions have come up:

[ol][li]Space is limited, so there are some countries we wouldn’t be able to display. Would it be offensive to hang the Chinese flag without hanging the Hong Kong flag? Similarly, what about Singapore? Taiwan?[/li]
[li]When I broached the subject of flying the North Korean flag (since we’re planning on flying the South Korean flag), I was met with stern resistance - “there are no North Koreans here, trust me” and “it wouldn’t be very PC” were phrases I heard. I realize North Korea doesn’t have the best track record in the world, but would it be acceptable not to fly her flag? (I also know there is a “unified Korean” flag, a white field with a blue outline of the country, which was used by a combined group of Koreans at an Olympics a while back, ostensibly being a cry by them to reunify their country. What about this flag?)[/li]
[li]Obviously Vietnam is now unified and they have their own flag. Still, I sense a lot of South Vietnamese pride, especially considering North Vietnam’s track record (see North Korea, above). Similarly, would it be acceptable or not acceptable to fly the South Vietnamese flag along with the (unified) Vietnamese flag, even though the country no longer exists, for those same “PC” reasons?[/li]
[li]Here are the countries’ flags we have on the list to pool from when we go ahead and purchase the flags. Are we missing any countries?:[/li]
Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam.[/ol]

So much distress in the world, so much bloody history… :frowning:

Esprix

2

What’s wrong with cute boys on a float?! I’d definitely go to a parade if they promised cute boys on the floats…

:smiley:

jayjay

3

Well, there’s quite an irony to my aiding your efforts, since my year in Japan allowed me to become entirely too well acquianted with my left hand. Anyway, a coupla countries around the edges come to mind:

Mongolia
Burma/Myanmar
E. Timor

Possibly: Papua (it does share an island with Indonesia’s Irian Jaya)

I imagine you’ve already decided not to include the remoter Pacific island nations.

4

Hrm. Maybe the North Korea/Vietnam questions might make good Great Debate fodder. What dost a mod think?

Esprix

5

Taiwanese would probably be offended if you include a PRC flag and not a ROC flag. And there are an awful lot of Taiwanese in LA.

Ask someone from HK, but I can’t really imagine someone being bummed if the Bahaina HK SAR flag was missing.

6

OK, dear, I’m a rice queen, but knowing all the abbreviations is asking too much. Wanna spell some of that out for me, please? :smiley:

PRC = People’s Republic of China
ROC = ?
HK = Hong Kong
Bhaina HK SAR = ?

And it’s San Diego, not LA. I do not know the demographic breakdown of the Asian populations here, alas. All I know is - lots of Flip, lots of Chinese, lots of Vietnamese. Beyond that, I just date 'em, I don’t always get details. :o

Esprix

7

ROC - Republic of China aka Taiwan, perhaps?

8

Yup, they call themselves that, the arroga… ehm, I digress :smiley:

I think the Hong Kong flag is unnecessary, and personally I wouldn’t mind seeing the Taiwan flag go too. However, it would be far more PC to display it along with the PRC flag, since there are no doubt many who consider themselves Taiwanese who will participate.

Leaving certain nation’s out because of a bad track record is a slippery slope I suggest you avoid, however.

Best of luck, I hope it turns out great!

— G. Raven

9

Forgot to mention, Hong Kong SAR stands for “Self Autonomous (sp?) Region”.

— G. Raven

10

SAR = Special Administrative Region
Hong Kong is really a part of China now, so I think you could get away without displaying their flag. It’s a different flag now, anyway, than the one they flew during colonial days. Taiwan is effectively <nudge, nudge, wink, wink> separate from the People’s Republic of China, so I’d say give them their flag (the real one and not the lame one they use during the Olympics).

11

As far as Koreans go (yes, I’m generalizing…), you must remember that they tend to think/feel that North and South Korea are the same country (as they are, more or less, ignoring politics…). So I don’t think that any Koreans would be offended by the addition of the North Korean flag, or the Unified Korean flag, or both!

If there is serious opposition within your group to including the North Korean flag, however, I’d just go with the South Korean flag and call it good…

Keep this in mind, though… homosexuality is a very touchy topic for (non-gay) Koreans… they are just getting used to the fact that there ARE gay Koreans! Just a couple of years ago, if you asked a Korean where they gay Koreans hung out (yes, the topic came up in class on a couple of occassions, when discussing things…), you would be told most firmly that there ARE NO gay Koreans (nonsense, of course!). Recently, however, a few Korean actors and other celebrities have come out of the closet; so homosexuality is slowly gaining acceptance… so you might meet some resistance from older, more traditional Koreans. It’s difficult to guess whether they would say anything to you or just stay silent, though!

:wink:

12

I work with a large number of Vietnamese people. As most of them are from the south of the country, and fled the current regime, they were offended when management at my workplace displayed the current Vietnamese flag (yellow star centred on red) at a cultural day. I’d really be careful with that flag.

13

You said Asian countries didn’t yah Esprix. You forgot Tibet, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkestan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. As to the rice queen comment, three of these countries are major exporters of rice… you guess which ones. I also think I missed a couple of former Soviet Republics…

14

Whoops, forgot Nepal and Bhutan also.

15

OK, this is very education for me. I’m going to be discussing this with the group at large tomorrow afternoon.

Oxy and bagkitty, I realize there are other countries on the Asian continent, but the group only refers to eastern Asian countries, not southern Asian (India, Pakistan, etc.), nor Russia. We also ostensibly include Pacific Islanders, but, as pointed out, there are an awful lot of 'em little islands; generally speaking, we’re talking about Filipinos and Hawaiians.

Astroboy, it’s a gay pride parade - any Koreans there won’t have any problem with gay Koreans. :slight_smile:

So yea on Taiwan, nay on Hong Kong, and further discussion on Korea and Vietnam.

Thank you for the input so far - still welcoming more!

Esprix