Kingdom of Rangya

The Kingdom of Rangya (Rangyan: 琅野王国 rangya wangkok) is an island nation located in the East China Sea, halfway between China and Okinawa Prefecture of Japan. Its capital city is Urarinkhyu, and its official language is Rangyan.

History

 * In 1544, both Taiwan and Rangya were discovered by Portugal.
 * Portugal, and later Spain and Dutch were allowed to set up trading posts in Rangya.
 * Western settlements in Rangya helped keep early Japanese invasion away. (Japan invaded Ryukyu in 1609 but failed to invade Korea during 1592-1598)
 * Portuguese and Spanish traders were driven away by the Dutch forces
 * Dutch influence in Rangya was getting larger and larger, and eventually Rangya became a colony of the Dutch Empire.
 * The Rangya royals were kept as puppet rulers to ease the resistance in Rangya. (like Sultans in British Malaya?)
 * Japan didn't invade Dutch Rangya until Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) because of Rangaku ("Dutch Learning") during 1641-1853
 * "Dutch Learning" and by extension "Western learning", is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641–1853, because of the policy of national isolation.
 * The Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation during World War II ended Dutch rule, and encouraged the previously suppressed Rangyan independence movement
 * Like Burma and the Philippines, Rangya was granted formal independence by the Japanese in 1943. Rangyan representatives were sent to the Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo in November 1943.
 * Rangyan monarchy was restored in the form of constitutional monarchy after gaining independence in 1946.

Politics
Rangya is a unitary state under a constitutional monarchy where the power of the King is very limited. As a ceremonial figurehead, the monarch himself is symbolic rather than political, and is defined by the constitution as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people". Power is held chiefly by the Prime Minister of Rangya and other elected members of the parliament, while sovereignty is vested in the Rangyan people. Thenbong Kijang (天奉紀奘) is the current King of Rangya; Thenbong Kenghong (天奉経弘), Crown Prince of Rangya, stands as next in line to the throne.

Administrative divisions
Due to the small physical size of Rangya, the city-state only consists of two metropolises (pyu 府) and five counties (gun 郡), each headed by an elected mayor (gunsang 郡相 for counties and pyusang 府相 for metropolises) and with county councils as local administrations. Each county is further divided into cities (zhi 市), towns (ip 邑) and townships (hang 鄉) as the second level of administrative units.

Addressing system
The Rangyan addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Rangya. The addresses, like their East Asian counterparts, are written using the opposite convention from Western addresses, starting with the biggest geographical entities down to the more specific ones, with the name of recipient last of all.

Rangyan addresses begin with the largest division of the country, county (hwen 県). Following the county is district (khyu 区). The next two elements of the address are street name (e.g. goro 路 for road, gone 街 for street, and etc.) and street number (ho 号). If applicable, the final elements of the address are building name, floor and room number.

In addition to the address itself, all locations in Rangya have a postal code. Since the reform of 1996, postal codes in Rangya have consisted of seven digits and are administered by Rangya Post. The postal mark 丌 may precede the code to indicate that the number following is a postal code.

The postal mark 丌 (yudei mak 郵逓막) is stylised yenmun letter yu ㅠ, from the Rangyan word yudei (郵逓 postal delivery). The mark dates from the pre-World War II era, when literacy was less complete, the yenmun symbol being more easily recognised than a hanji.

Each 7-digit postal code is made up of the 2-digit sector number (the combination of 1-digit county number and 1-digit district number), 2-digit block number1 and the 3-digit delivery point number2. Postal codes are written in the format of ##-##-### (e.g. 16-53-015) with hyphens separating the three parts.


 * 1) Each sector is further divided into city blocks (gun 郡). And each city block is assigned a 2-digit block number.
 * 2) The delivery point number defines the delivery point within a city block, e.g. house or building.

Below is an example of an address in Rangya.

When written in the Latin alphabet, the order is reversed so that the recipient is first and the county is last. "Rangya" (or the full country name "Kingdom of Rangya") is added after the county (always in English) for international mail. The family name of the recipient may be capitalised to avoid ambiguity. Mail carriers are well trained to interpret romanised Rangyan addresses, and should have little trouble delivering mail, especially if the correct postal code is included. The following is the above Rangyan address written in Western convention recommended by Rangya Post.

Transport
Rangya is a small city-state with a high population density, therefore, there is a need to restrict the number of private cars on the road. Since a law passed in May 1981 in order to discourage private car ownership, annual licensing fees were increased by 250% and cars have been subjected to a first-time registration tax which, based on the size and efficiency of the car, varies from 135% to 175% of its market value. Car prices are generally significantly higher in Rangya when compared to other developed countries and thus only 9 in 100 residents own a car.

Rangya has a highly developed and sophisticated transport network. Over 80% of the daily journeys in Rangya are on public transport, making it one of the highest rates in the world. Payment can be made using the Chenmak card (chenmakkhat 阡陌칻), a stored value system introduced by the Rangya Railway Corporation (RRC; rangya thetdo tsyusik khiyep 琅野鉄道株式企業), which is widely accepted on railways, buses and ferries, and accepted like cash at other outlets. The RRC runs the public train system with 208 stations which serves 1.2 million people a day. The Rangya Tramway Corporation (rangya denchya tsyusik khiyep 琅野電車株式企業) runs the public tram system which covers Dotsin county in Rangya. Four franchised companies operate the public bus services. There are six taxi companies in Rangya that together put out 12,000 taxis on the road. Taxi fares are relatively inexpensive compared to many other developed countries.

Energy
As of 2010, 68.5% of energy in Rangya is produced from natural gas, 20.5% from crude oil, 9.1% from wind power, and 1.9% from solar power.

Rangya produced all of its consumed natural gas and crude oil in 2010 from its offshore drilling. The Renewable Energy Transition Plan launched by the Rangyan government in November 2008 aims at 40% of renewable in electricity generation by 2025.

Demographics
As of 2010, the population of Rangya is 2.32 million, of whom 2.17 million (93.5%) are citizens while the rest are permanent residents (4.1%) or foreign workers (2.4%). The resident population does not take into account the 5 million transient visitors who visit Rangya annually.

In 2010, the total fertility rate was 1.9 children per woman, slightly below the 2.1 needed to replace the population. The average life expectancy in Rangya is 79.12 years for males and 84.74 years for females as of 2010, making it one of the highest life expectancies in the world.

Ethnic groups
In 2010, the government census reports that 89.2% of residents were ethnic Rangyan; and 2.2% of Chinese, 2.1% of Korean, 1.6% of Japanese, 1.9% Caucasian descent or expatriates. There were an estimate of 55,800 foreign domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines working in Rangya.

Languages
Both Rangyan and English are the official languages of Rangya. Nearly 90 percent of the 2.3 million population speaks Rangyan as their first language, and that makes Rangyan the national language of Rangya. There are up to 105,000 speakers of the Rangyan language outside Rangya. Large groups of Rangyan-speaking expatriates are found in China (around 42,000 speakers), the United States (around 20,000 speakers), Japan (around 16,000), South Korea (around 8,000), Australia (3,000), Canada (2,000) and Hong Kong (2,000). It is estimated that there are around 15,000 people scattered across the world who are able to speak Rangyan because of job requirements (for example, salespersons or businessmen with Rangyan contacts), marriages to Rangyans or out of pure interest in the language.

The genealogical classification of Rangyan is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family; others consider it to be a language isolate. Rangyan is an agglutinative and SOV-ordered language distinguished by a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Rangyan society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary indicating the relative status of speaker and listener. Rangyan writing uses hanji (Chinese characters) and yenmun (Korean hangul), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. Like Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, Rangyan has borrowed much vocabulary from the Chinese or created vocabulary on Chinese models.

Besides Rangyan and English, the five recognised regional languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, Indonesian and Dutch) are spoken among the ethnic groups in Rangya as well.