The Chinese Zodiac Explained
The Chinese zodiac is a repeating twelve year cycle in which each year is represented by an animal. It is closely tied to Chinese New Year because the animal associated with a year changes at the start of the new lunar year rather than on the first of January.
The order of the animals
The twelve animals, in their traditional order, are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. After the pig, the cycle returns to the rat and the sequence repeats. Because the cycle is twelve years long, a person's zodiac animal recurs every twelve years, which is why people sometimes mark their twelfth, twenty fourth or thirty sixth birthday as a kind of return to their own animal year.
How the animal of a year is determined
The zodiac animal changes on the date of Chinese New Year, not on the first of January. This means that someone born in January or early February should check the exact date their Chinese New Year fell on that year before assuming which animal applies to them, since a birth a few weeks before or after the lunar new year can belong to a different animal than expected.
Traditional associations
Each animal in the cycle has long been associated with a set of characteristics in folklore and popular culture, such as particular personality traits or areas of fortune for people born in that year. These associations are a matter of cultural tradition and popular belief rather than anything that can be tested or verified, and different regions and writers sometimes describe the same animal in slightly different terms. This guide treats them as part of the cultural fabric of the festival rather than as factual predictions.
The five elements
Alongside the twelve animals, a separate cycle of five elements, namely wood, fire, earth, metal and water, is traditionally paired with the zodiac animals. Combining the twelve animals with the five elements produces a longer cycle of sixty unique combinations before the exact same animal and element pairing repeats. This is one reason why, for example, two people born twelve years apart with the same zodiac animal are sometimes said to have a different elemental quality to their year.
Zodiac symbols during the festival
During Chinese New Year celebrations, decorations, greeting cards and gifts often feature an image of the coming year's animal. Public celebrations in cities with a Chinese community may include performances or displays themed around that year's animal, in addition to the more general dragon and lion dances that are common throughout the festival period regardless of which animal year it is.
A cultural reference point, not a calendar system on its own
It is worth noting that the zodiac cycle is a cultural framework layered on top of the lunisolar calendar, rather than a separate calendar in its own right. The actual timing of Chinese New Year, and therefore the point at which the zodiac animal changes, is set by the lunisolar calendar described on the main page of this site, which tracks the moon's phases and periodically inserts a leap month to stay aligned with the solar year.
Readers interested in the customs and symbolic food associated with the festival itself, separate from the zodiac, can find more detail on the traditions page of this site.