What is the Chinese zodiac?

A way of naming years

The Chinese zodiac is a way of naming years. Each year of the traditional Chinese calendar belongs to one of twelve animals, always in the same order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. After the Pig the count starts again with the Rat, so every animal comes back every twelve years. ^1,2

It has nothing to do with where the Sun was on your birthday. The Western zodiac and the Chinese zodiac both have twelve signs, but the Western signs divide one year into twelve months, and the Chinese animals divide twelve years. Two friends born a month apart usually share an animal and have different sun signs; two born on the same date a year apart share a sun sign and have different animals.

The animals are the friendly face of something older: twelve Earthly Branches that Chinese calendar-makers used to count days, months, years and the hours of the day. The Lam Museum at Wake Forest University puts it plainly: the animals were added later, as an aid to memory. In everyday speech a year is still named by its animal, and the branch sits quietly behind it. ^3,4

The character sketches that now come with each animal are newer still. The V&A’s curator Ming Wilson points out that old Chinese texts never mention a belief that the year of your birth shapes your character; it is a recent idea. For most of its history the animal was a label for the year, and a lucky or unlucky one for marriages, journeys and building. ^5,4

How the cycle is built

Twelve branches, ten stems, five elements, yin and yang: the frame every animal page sits on.

Each animal stands for one Earthly Branch, and each branch also names a double hour of the day, a month of the lunar calendar and a point of the compass. The Rat’s branch, zǐ, is midnight, the month of the winter solstice and due north. The Horse’s, wǔ, is noon, the month of the summer solstice and due south. The table below has all twelve. ^6,3

Running alongside the twelve branches are ten Heavenly Stems. They come in five pairs, one for each of the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, and in every pair the first stem is yang and the second yin. A year takes one stem and one branch, and both step forward one place each year. ^6,3,7

Ten and twelve only line up again after sixty steps, so the calendar names sixty different years before it repeats. That is the sixty-year cycle: five rounds of the twelve animals, each round with the elements in new places. The current cycle began in 1984 with a Wood Rat and ends with a Water Pig in 2043. ^2,7

Because a yang stem only ever meets an odd-numbered branch, six animals always fall in yang years (Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey and Dog) and six in yin years (Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster and Pig). A shortcut that works for every year: if it ends in an even digit, it is a yang year. ^6,3

The animal changes at Lunar New Year, not on January 1. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar: each month starts at a new moon, and a leap month is slipped in now and then to keep the months in step with the seasons. New Year is the second new moon after the start of the month that holds the December solstice (the third when a leap month comes in between), which puts it between January 21 and February 20. The Hong Kong Observatory counts the year from that day; some fortune tellers switch at the solar term called Spring Commences, around February 4, instead. ^2,7

Hours and compass points belong to each animal’s Earthly Branch. Recent years are counted from Lunar New Year.

Worked out: which animal and element is a year?

Three steps, the same sums the machine does.

The animal. Take the year, subtract 4 and divide by 12. The remainder is the animal’s place in the cycle, counting the Rat as 0: 0 Rat, 1 Ox, 2 Tiger and so on to 11 Pig. For 1990: 1990 − 4 = 1986, and 1986 ÷ 12 leaves 6, the Horse.

The element. Look at the last digit: 0 or 1 is Metal, 2 or 3 Water, 4 or 5 Wood, 6 or 7 Fire, 8 or 9 Earth. 1990 ends in 0, so it was a Metal year, and even, so yang.

The date. Both rules use the Chinese year, and the Chinese year 1990 began on January 27, 1990. Someone born on January 15, 1990 still belongs to 1989, an Earth Snake. Someone born in March 1990 is a Metal Horse.

This year. 2026 is a Fire Horse year, from February 17, 2026. 2027 is a Fire Goat year, from February 6, 2027. The machine works out every Lunar New Year itself, from the new moons and the December solstice, and the Chinese zodiac lookup does the sums for any birthday.

The Great Race, and the missing cat

A folk tale told many ways.

The story everyone knows explains the order of the animals, not their history. The Jade Emperor called a race across a wide river and gave out the years in the order the animals finished. The Rat, a poor swimmer, rode over on the Ox’s back and jumped off at the bank to come first. The Pig stopped for a meal and a nap and came in last. Some tellings make it a banquet given by the Buddha instead of a race. ^10,4

Many versions add that the Rat left its friend the Cat behind, which is why cats chase rats and why there is no Year of the Cat in China. The Lam Museum offers a duller reason: cats did not even exist in China when the zodiac animals first came about. Vietnam has a cat anyway. Its zodiac swaps the Rabbit for a Cat, and the Ox for a water buffalo. ^4,2,10

Two things that surprise people

A superstition you can see in the birth figures

In 1966, a Fire Horse year, an old Japanese belief made it a bad omen for a girl to be born. Japan recorded about 463,000 fewer births than its trend predicted. The next Fire Horse year was 2026. ^15,21

The first US stamp with Chinese characters

In 1992 the US Postal Service asked Honolulu designer Clarence Lee for a Year of the Rooster stamp. It was the first US stamp to carry Chinese characters, and it sold so well that a whole Lunar New Year series followed. Nearly eighty countries and regions now issue zodiac stamps every Spring Festival. ^18,12