'Butterfly designs' add order to ancient building clusters

People in ancient China had a profound love of symmetry, as reflected in the way buildings were designed and arranged in clusters. This file photo shows one particularly orderly cluster at the Summer Palace in Beijing. [File Photo: VCG]

A square in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, is decorated with Chinese "penjing" flowers cut into the shape of two peacocks that could be mirror images of one another. [File Photo: VCG]

Gulouyan, an ancient town in the city of Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province, is perfectly symmetrical. [File Photo: VCG]

Buildings are arranged in perfect symmetry at Longxing Temple in Yuncheng City, north China's Shanxi Province. [File Photo: VCG]