Remember in the ’90s when yin-yangs were everywhere? Necklaces, T-shirts, hats, shoes, wallpaper, you name it. That Chinese symbol was plastered on everything like a good-luck talisman meant to symbolize perfect balance. Or at least, that’s what we in the Western world thought.

It turns out we might have been completely wrong. Tang, a man who runs the YouTube channel TangSaying, recently corrected the information Westerners received about the yin-yang symbol. He explains everything from the true meaning of the symbol to what the two small dots within it mean. His explanation causes you to look at the symbol in a new light, suddenly making its shape make sense.

Yin-yang is not about balance

The yin-yang looks like two large drops of water about to swirl around one another. One side of the symbol is black with a small white dot in the center of the largest part. The other side is white with a small black dot in the center of its largest part. The large part of one sits snugly against the thin tail part of the other.

“You’ve seen this symbol a thousand times,” says Tang. “On T-shirts, on tattoos, in every........

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