In ancient China, the Chinese forefathers in 5000 years ago adopted loong(Chinese dragon) as their totem, and the empire often used the Loong Flag to represent itself. To this day, the Chinese still call themselves as the descendants of the Loong.
The phoenix, on the other hand, rarely appeared on flags, and the phoenix was only used to refer to the Empress.
There is a painting about the Ming Dynasty emperor traveling(古畫動漫─明人出警入蹕圖), I hope it will serve as a reference for Relic to redesign the flag of the Chinese variant civilization.
In China, the phoenix pattern is generally used for aristocratic women, or as a representative of women. In ancient societies dominated by men, the phoenix pattern was not used. In order to facilitate differentiation and recognition, the Chinese imperial army generally used Chinese characters to make flags, with very few using dragons as flags. It can be determined that the Qing Dynasty used dragon flags.
The Chinese variant of civilization is called Zhu Xi’s legacy. Confucius was called the Phoenix. In ancient China, the phoenix also represented virtuous people. Zhu Xi, as a Confucian master in the Song Dynasty, could certainly be represented by the phoenix.
