Chinese Bus upholstery

Picture is courtesy of MFinChina who took this shot on a bus from Menghun to Menghai and published it on Flickr. MFinChina wrote to me:

I have no idea how that upholstery ended up on the bus -- maybe some foreign customer had requested a big order of this pattern, and whoever upholstered the bus used the remnants. I doubt the Chinese people on the minibus had any idea what the symbol means -- they probably just think it is pleasing because it is made up of lines intersecting in a symmetrical pattern. That's an important motif in Chinese architecture, especially of window design.