The flag is said to have been created by Nguyen Thanh Tri and Tristan Nguyen in Saigon in 1973, after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. It was re-introduced in San Francisco, USA, in 2007 and is also known as the Reconciliation Flag of Vietnam. It is a yellow-green-red vertical tricolor with a white twelve-pointed star in center of white field. The ratio is 2:3. Yellow color is the symbol of Asia and Vietnamese people, green symbolizes peace and red stands for the "revolutionary enthusiasm," that is, readiness to make changes in order to improve the life. The star is white, which stands for the peace and reconciliation and also for the freedom. The number of points, corresponding to the number of years in Far Eastern calendar cycle, stands for the freedom, equality, and pluralism - the values expected to be the most respected in a new Vietnam.
The flag was proposed at a website in Vietnamese by a group of Vietnamese students from the USA, Canada, and France. The flag is horizontally divided blue-orange-blue (1:2:1), with a white lotus flower, fimbriated brown, in center of orange field. Blue color stands for the sky, sea and peace. Orange stands for Vietnamese people and is actually described as yellow (perhaps meant to be "saffron color"), which is said to be the traditional national color. Lotus is the national flower and its white color and brown fimbriations recall the emblem of the Hoa Hao religious community, which is a white lotus on brown field - actually, the form of lotus on the flag is the same as used by the Hoa Hao community in Vietnam, which suggests that the flag designers, at least some of them, might be the Vietnam-born followers of Hoa Hao (the form of lotus used by the followers in diaspora differs).
![[Viet Nam proposal]](../images/v/vn!1.gif)
![[Viet Nam proposal]](../images/v/vn!2.gif)
