Vietnamese School in Queensland
Vietnamese Children's Moon Festival
Vietnamese Flag
Visit any Vietnamese community around the world, and one is likely to see a flag displaying "three horizontal red stripes on a golden yellow background" fluttering proudly against the blue sky. Ask your friend, neighbor, student, or client, and she or he will tell you that those are the 'color" of Free Vietnam. It is the flag under which hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have fought shoulder to shoulder and died, defending freedom against an internationally inspired and communist-led aggressive war against the Republic of Vietnam. That the war ended in 1975 in the subjugation of South Vietnam in no way reflects negatively on the symbolism of those "color". In fact, the very survival of that flag is the survival of the idea of freedom, which remains the ideal of all free men on earth.
Symbolism
The Vietnamese flag has a yellow background and three horizontal red stripes along its entire length. The "golden yellow" has been the traditional color of Vietnam for over two thousand years. It is also the color of earth, as understood in universal scheme of five elements in Oriental cosmology. The three stripes represent three regions of Vietnam: North, Central, and South Vietnam as united in a national community. The vibrant red color of the stripes is the color of blood flowing through one's veins-symbolic of Vietnam's unflagging struggle for independence throughout its recorded history.
Historical Identity
As in the case of the Stars and Stripes, the Vietnamese flag bonds Vietnamese Australian with their historical past: the identity of the Yellow Flag has enabled the Vietnamese to survive as a nation even after a millennium of Chinese and French domination. Thus, the "golden yellow" flag came to be irrevocably associated with the Vietnamese, their national territory, and their history.
