i ching

India and China also know five elements. But let me instead consider the 8 trigrams of the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching.

III	heaven, strong, creative, father
:::	earth, devoted/yielding, receptive, mother
::I	thunder, inciting movement, arousing, 1st son
:I:	water, dangerous, abysmal, 2nd son
I::	mountain, resting, keeping still, 3rd son
II:	wind/wood, penetrating, gentle, 1st daughter
I:I	fire, light-giving, clinging, 2nd daughter
:II	lake, joyful, joyous, 3rd daughter

Seems they resemble the Greek elements in pairs, namely heaven-wind (air), earth-mountain, fire-thunder and water-lake. Let me rearrange them into another table:

III	heaven	air	rests	male
II:	wind/wood	air	moves	female
I::	mountain	earth	rests	male
:::	earth	earth	moves	female
I:I	fire	fire	rests	female
::I	thunder	fire	moves	male
:II	lake	water	rests	female
:I:	water	water	moves	male

Interestingly, if one selects the trigrams that correspond to the Greek elements, i.e. resting air and earth, moving fire and water, this selects exactly the male trigrams.

leads

The I Ching is a divination system. By tossing coins or drawing yarrow sticks, one determines hexagrams (two trigrams) that are given meanings in the text of the I Ching.
It appears that the fifth element is somehow contained in the duality of the trigrams. Can it be made more specific in which way exactly ?
A useful hint might be the following quote from the introduction of I Ching or Book of Changes. Richard Wilhelm. English by Cary F. Baynes. Penguin Books. 2003.
"The eight trigrams are symbols standing for changing transitional states; they are images that are constantly undergoing change. Attention centers not on things in their state of being - as is chiefly the case in the Occident - but upon their movements in change. The eight trigrams therefore are not representations of things as such but of their tendencies in movement."
How about putting the four elements into a circle in which they transform into each other ? That would give 8 different transitions (4 forward, 4 backward).