In 1911, citizens of Shanghai hung five-color republican flags along Nanjing Road, in support of the revolution. In 2013, B.U. students drink coconut milk out of–what else?–coconuts on Nanjing Road. The street is now mostly pedestrian-only, and it functions as a bustling tourist and shopping destination in downtown Shanghai.
The five horizontal stripes on the flags of the republican era were meant to represent the supposed five major groups of people in China: the Han, the Manchu, the Mongolian, the Muslim, and the Tibetan.
