does anyone have any info on the significance of banners or standards during the imperial era? any pictures of banners or re-makes of banners?

and i would ask you to define imperial era.
only qing had an unified banner system influenced by the west.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...y_Flag_1889.svg

imperial era = Qin - the start of the republic of china

There is no national flag for Qin. The first chinese dynasty to have a national flag was Qing dynasty.

But there was a military flag for Qin Army. See below

ICA Flags and Banners

There were far more, and they were far larger, than in any European army of the time [or indeed, probably any time!] – up to 20% of a unit carried a flag even in the 1890s. Each unit of cavalry, infantry and even artillery, had a number of them, of different shapes and sizes. Many were quite small, strapped to a man’s back. Others were larger battalion, battalion commander and company flags. The former were usually triangular, and the latter square.

There appears to have been a ‘designating system’ to the flags too, which followed through from army, brigade battalion and company. Red indicated vanguard, blue left wing, white right wing, yellow centre and black rearguard. Flags of units larger than a company tended to have ‘flame-pattern’ serrated borders.

Flags bore mottoes, abstract patterns, devices such as tigers, dragons, clouds & stars, yin and yang symbols, circles, wavy and zigzag lines. By the Boxer Uprising it was more common for them to have the first glyph of the commander’s name. Colours varied greatly, the devices being in yellow, green, white and gold [even the tigers]. There also horizontally striped flags, most often of 5 stripes, often yellow/red/black/white/blue, in various sequences.

An earlier example of a general’s personal pennant was a small red rectangle with a white central disc, flown above a large square standard of red cotton with black Chinese characters and border.

Mongol irregular cavalry flags were like the Chinese but with inscriptions in Mongol script. Like the Chinese one man in every ten generally carried a flag.

Prior to 1872 there was no Chinese national flag. From 1872 the Qing Manchu banner used as a national flag was a blue five-toed dragon reaching for the red sun on a yellow triangular field. In 1890 the flag became rectangular, and the basic design slightly altered. As these flags were hand made, there was little standardization, and proportions and details varied. A representation based on a hand embroidered example shows exquisite hand stitching and fine detail.

Individual government officials and agencies had flags and banners.