text: Ancient Chinese thought influenced a lot of cultures in Asia- but Buddhism is originally from China- anyhow, to get a rough grip, I'd advise you to think of Ancient China's role in Asia  to being similar to that of the Ancient Roman Empire was for most of Europe. That's particularly true for Korea and Japan, but less so for other parts of the regions. \n\nTibet I think was a sort of cultural bridge between India and China. In some ages it was part of China, in others it was independent. Now China has it again, and the indigenous culture is suffering, even if the people may be beginning to like the money Chinese relations bring in as the Chinese themselves will tell you. Tibetan writing is different from Chinese writing. Korean and Japanese use parts of Chinese writing, and also Chinese thought in their culture. Confucian thought, basically a kind of codified patriarchy, is really important in gender role divisions in a lot of Asian countries now. \n\nAnyhow, you were talking about symbols. Of course, there's a real mish-mash of stuff out there, the area you're talking about is as large as Europe. A classic example that we've taken into the West of course is the twelve animal Chinese Zodiac. So rich! \n\nYou said about the dragon? That's lucky and magical, but it has correspondences- the direction ESE, the element wood, the season of late Spring, the hours 7-9 am... and lots more stuff. For example, the dog has the opposite position in the Zodiac. If your horoscope contained a dog element, then you'd watch out between 7 and 9am, and you certainly wouldn't take a journey East South East in that time, you'd go by a more scenic route. Dragons in turn would be weakest at 7-9pm, and wouldn't want to be travelling West South West. Say you'd a picture of a building somewhere in China, and it was painted from the WSW perspective, the artist may put a dog in the picture as well for luck.\n\nI'll just give you a few more examples I know from Japanese- the crane and the turtle are symbols of long life, the wild goose is a symbol of transcience. Foxes are spiritual tricksters, the koi carp is a boys emblem. I mean, the list goes on... if you can give any more solid examples of stuff you'd like to know, I'll do my best...