Ideas
The Chinese zodiac, explained by a sceptic
The short answer
The Chinese zodiac assigns one of 12 animals to each year in a repeating cycle, combined with five elements for a 60-year cycle. Few take it literally, but it shapes conversations, birth timing and New Year traditions.
The Chinese zodiac, 生肖 shēngxiào, gives every year one of twelve animals. Kungfucius does not believe that the year of your birth decides your character, your marriage or your career, and nothing below asks you to. But the zodiac is worth knowing for a better reason: people use it to ask your age, time their children, choose their underwear and write their New Year cards.
So this is a guide to the culture, with the fortune-telling left politely at the door.
What are the 12 Chinese zodiac animals?
The order is fixed, and each animal is tied to one of the twelve earthly branches, 地支 dìzhī, an old counting series that was also used for months and hours.
| Animal | Character | Pinyin | Earthly branch | Recent and coming years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rat | 鼠 | shǔ | 子 zǐ | 2008, 2020, 2032 |
| Ox | 牛 | niú | 丑 chǒu | 2009, 2021, 2033 |
| Tiger | 虎 | hǔ | 寅 yín | 2010, 2022, 2034 |
| Rabbit | 兔 | tù | 卯 mǎo | 2011, 2023, 2035 |
| Dragon | 龍 (龙) | lóng | 辰 chén | 2012, 2024, 2036 |
| Snake | 蛇 | shé | 巳 sì | 2013, 2025, 2037 |
| Horse | 馬 (马) | mǎ | 午 wǔ | 2014, 2026, 2038 |
| Goat | 羊 | yáng | 未 wèi | 2015, 2027, 2039 |
| Monkey | 猴 | hóu | 申 shēn | 2016, 2028, 2040 |
| Rooster | 雞 (鸡) | jī | 酉 yǒu | 2017, 2029, 2041 |
| Dog | 狗 | gǒu | 戌 xū | 2018, 2030, 2042 |
| Pig | 豬 (猪) | zhū | 亥 hài | 2019, 2031, 2043 |
羊 covers both sheep and goats, so you will see the eighth animal translated either way.
The famous explanation for the order is a race organised by the Jade Emperor, in which the rat rode across the river on the ox and jumped off at the finish. It is a good bedtime story. The historical record is drier: bamboo slips from Qin-period tombs of the third century BCE already pair animals with the branches, and the scholar Wang Chong listed the familiar set in the first century CE.
Fortune-telling itself is far older than the animals. The earliest Chinese writing that survives, from around 1250 BCE, consists of questions to the spirits carved on turtle shells and ox shoulder blades, which were heated until they cracked so that the cracks could be read. That was divination for kings, though, and had nothing to do with birth years. The zodiac is a latecomer by a thousand years.
Two footnotes from Kungfucius's notebook. There is no lion, because the list was settled before lions, which arrived in China as tribute animals and Buddhist symbols, became familiar. And three of the Simplified characters, 狗, 猴 and 猪, share the animal radical 犭, a small demonstration of what radicals are for. The Traditional pig, 豬, uses the older pig radical 豕 instead.
Does the Chinese zodiac start on 1 January?
No. The animal changes at Lunar New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February. Anyone born in January or early February needs to check the date for their birth year. A baby born on 20 January 2027 is still a Horse.
| Lunar New Year | Animal | Stem and branch |
|---|---|---|
| 17 February 2026 | Horse | 丙午 bǐngwǔ |
| 6 February 2027 | Goat | 丁未 dīngwèi |
| 26 January 2028 | Monkey | 戊申 wùshēn |
| 13 February 2029 | Rooster | 己酉 jǐyǒu |
| 3 February 2030 | Dog | 庚戌 gēngxū |
There is a second school. Professional fortune-tellers, who work with the hour, day, month and year of birth, change the year at 立春 lìchūn, the "start of spring" in the solar calendar, on 3, 4 or 5 February. For someone born on 5 February 2027, after 立春 but before New Year's Day, the popular count says Horse and the fortune-teller says Goat. Astrology that cannot agree on its own starting line is one of the reasons Kungfucius remains unconverted.
The five elements and the 60-year cycle
The animals are only half of the traditional year name. The other half comes from the ten heavenly stems, 天干 tiāngān, which are grouped in pairs under the five elements, 五行 wǔxíng: wood 木 mù, fire 火 huǒ, earth 土 tǔ, metal 金 jīn and water 水 shuǐ.
Stems and branches advance together, one step each per year. Ten stems and twelve branches line up again after 60 years, which gives the sexagenary cycle, 干支 gānzhī. Each element therefore rules two years in a row, and each animal meets each element once every 60 years.
A shortcut: the last digit of the Western year tells you the element. 0 and 1 are metal, 2 and 3 water, 4 and 5 wood, 6 and 7 fire, 8 and 9 earth. So 2024 was a wood dragon, 2026 is a fire horse and 2027 a fire goat. Completing the full cycle is why the 60th birthday is the big one across East Asia.
本命年 and the red underwear
Every twelfth year your own animal comes round again. This is your 本命年 běnmìngnián, "year of one's fate", at ages 12, 24, 36, 48, 60 and so on. You might expect it to be lucky. Tradition says the opposite: in your own year you are said to offend 太歲 (太岁) Tàisuì, the deity of the year, and to be exposed to misfortune.
The remedy is red. People wear red underwear, red socks, a red belt or a red string bracelet, ideally given to them by someone else, and shops lay out the stock every January. In Taiwan many also pay a temple a small fee to register for a year of protection, 安太歲 (安太岁) ān Tàisuì.
Kungfucius's view: there is no evidence that red underwear prevents anything, and there is also no known harm. Anyone born in a Horse year is in their 本命年 until 5 February 2027.
How the zodiac shows up in daily life
Small talk. The standard question is 你屬什麼？(你属什么？) Nǐ shǔ shénme?, "What do you belong to?" The answer is 我屬馬 (我属马) Wǒ shǔ mǎ, "I belong to the horse". It is friendlier than asking for an age, and it works as one: the asker can see which decade you are in and does the arithmetic.
New Year. Each year's animal is on envelopes, stamps and banners, and greetings pun on its name. In a horse year you hear 馬到成功 (马到成功) mǎ dào chénggōng, "success as soon as the horse arrives". More of this habit is on the page about puns and homophones, and the animal on a red envelope should be the current one.
Matchmaking and babies. Compatibility charts of animals still get consulted, mostly by parents and with decreasing force. Birth timing is where belief becomes measurable. Dragon years are favoured: Singapore recorded 21 per cent more births in 1988 and about 8 per cent more in 2000 and 2012. A study from the National University of Singapore later found that the island's dragon babies earned less than other cohorts, probably because so many of them competed for the same school places and jobs. The dragon delivers a crowded classroom.
The clearest case is Japan. Women born in a fire horse year, 丙午, were said to be dangerous to husbands, and in 1966 Japanese births fell by roughly a fifth to a quarter, depending on the baseline. 2026 is the next fire horse year. The zodiac does not shape character, but belief in it has shaped the size of whole school years.
The zodiac in Japan, Korea and Vietnam
| Country | Name | What differs |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 干支 eto | The year changes on 1 January, since Japan moved its New Year to the Western calendar in 1873. The last animal is the wild boar, inoshishi, not the pig, and the eighth is the sheep, hitsuji. |
| Korea | 띠 tti | Same twelve animals, with the sheep for the goat. The year changes at Seollal, the Lunar New Year. |
| Vietnam | con giáp | The cat, mèo, replaces the rabbit and the water buffalo, trâu, replaces the ox. The year changes at Tết. |
The Vietnamese cat is real: 2023 was the Year of the Cat in Vietnam and of the Rabbit everywhere else. Nobody knows for certain why. The usual suggestion is sound: the branch 卯 mǎo, read Mão in Vietnamese, resembles mèo, cat.
The age question travels too. In Japan the animal appears on every New Year postcard, and Koreans ask 무슨 띠예요? museun ttiyeyo?, "Which animal are you?", for the same age arithmetic as in China.
A note of caution: do not say 我是…
When you tell someone your sign, use the verb 屬 (属) shǔ, "to belong to". The sentence is 我屬龍 (我属龙) wǒ shǔ lóng, "I belong to the dragon".
Do not say 我是龍 (我是龙) wǒ shì lóng. That means "I am a dragon", which is a bold claim. With some animals it is worse: 我是豬 (我是猪) wǒ shì zhū, "I am a pig", and 我是狗 (我是狗) wǒ shì gǒu, "I am a dog", are the sentences you do not want to say at a dinner table. People will understand what you meant. They will also remember it.
What to do next
- Find your animal in the table. If you were born in January or February, look up the Lunar New Year date of that year first.
- Learn 我屬… (我属…) Wǒ shǔ… with your animal. You will be asked.
- Note your next 本命年 and decide for yourself about the underwear.
- When someone reads your character from your birth year, smile, and ask what they are. The conversation is the point.