Taijitu the Tibetan designs have three or four swirls (representing the Three Jewels or the Four Noble Truths, i.e. as a triskele and a tetraskelion design), Lai Zhide's taijitu has two swirls, terminating in a central circle. The Ming-era design of the taijitu of two interlocking spirals has been reported as "yin-yang symbol" in the first half of the 20th century. The flag of South Korea, originally introduced as the flag of Joseon era Korea in 1882, shows this symbol in red and blue. This was a modernisation of the older (early 19th century) form of the Bat Quai Do used
Taijitu and called the "River Chart spontaneously generated by Heaven and Earth". By the end of the Ming period, this diagram had become a widespread representation of Chinese cosmology. The dots were introduced in the later Ming period (replacing the droplet-shapes used earlier, in the 16th century) and are encountered more frequently in the Qing period. The dots represent the seed of yin within yang and the seed of yang within yin; the idea that neither can exist without the other. Lai Zhide's design is similar to the "gakyil" ("dga' 'khyil" or "wheel of joy") symbols of Tibetan Buddhism; but while