Picture of the Day: Upside Down Flag

Chinese flag was flying upside down on Friday morning at the Liaison Office

We can't help but be amused by the incident of the Chinese flag hoisted upside down outside the Liaison Office in Western District on Friday.

A picture of it went up on Facebook at 7am on Friday with the caption: "Inverted national flag. What happened? A special occasion?"

By 2pm on Friday, the post had attracted about 300 comments and some 2,800 responses, including 1,500 "haha" messages and about 1,000 likes.

The post was shared 500 times, one of them was Joshua Wong Chi-fung, co-founder and leader of the Demosisto Party.

"How to interpret this? Would people be considered to be breaking the national flag law for posting this picture?" Wong asked on his Facebook page.

The National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance says a person who publicly and wilfully desecrates the national flag can be fined up to HK$50,000 (US$6,378) or jailed for three years. 

So who committed this shameful act right in the office that represents Beijing?

The Liaison Office would not publicly assign blame, only to say: "We have seriously reprimanded the staff member, and we would like to thank the Hong Kong society for their concern," an official with the office said. "We will improve our management to make sure that this will not happen again."

And we are sure this will NEVER happen again at the Liaison Office, of all places. 

We want to know -- how long did it take the Liaison Office to know the flag was flying upside down? It shows that even the minions and officials who walk into the building didn't even notice something was wrong...