Twelve animals
and a sixty-year wheel.

Where the twelve come from

The twelve earthly branches are older than the animals attached to them. They began as a way of dividing the day into twelve double hours and the sky into twelve stations, and the animal names were mapped onto them later — which is why every animal still owns two hours of the clock, and why the hour of birth carries an animal of its own in a full Chinese reading.

The famous story — the Jade Emperor's race, the Rat riding the Ox and jumping off at the line, the Cat left out and hunting the Rat ever since — is a much later folk explanation for an order that already existed. It is a good story and it is not the reason.

The five elements, and the ten stems

Alongside the twelve branches run ten heavenly stems: the five elements, each in a yang and a yin form. Because ten and twelve have a lowest common multiple of sixty, the pairing of stem and branch repeats every sixty years — the sexagenary cycle, which is the unit a Chinese almanac actually works in.

So there is no such thing as simply "a Dragon year". There are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water Dragons, and they come round once each per sixty years. 2024 was a yang Wood Dragon; the previous one was 1964 and the next is 2084.

Wood — years ending 4 and 5

Growth, expansion and cooperation. Wood pushes outward and wants more room; it is the most idealistic of the five and the least tolerant of a ceiling.

Fire — years ending 6 and 7

Heat, drama and persuasion. Fire animates whatever it touches and burns through it; the strength and the cost are the same trait.

Earth — years ending 8 and 9

Stability, patience and practicality. Earth is the balancing element in the cycle — it holds, feeds and, at its worst, refuses to move at all.

Metal — years ending 0 and 1

Precision, structure and cutting away. Metal clarifies by removing, which produces both real elegance and real hardness.

Water — years ending 2 and 3

Depth, communication and adaptability. Water goes round obstacles rather than through them, and it is the most persuasive and least direct of the five.

The elements also relate to each other in two cycles that matter enormously for reading a pair. In the generating cycle each element feeds the next: wood feeds fire, fire feeds earth, earth feeds metal, metal feeds water, water feeds wood. In the controlling cycle each checks another: wood breaks earth, earth absorbs water, water quenches fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood. Two people can share a trine and still have elements that grind, and that is where the real nuance of the system lives.

The four trines

Animals four apart form a trine and are said to share a temperament. It is the same geometry the Western zodiac uses for its own trine — twelve positions, four apart, three groups of four — arrived at independently, which is either a fact about human pattern-making or a fact about twelve.

Clashes, punishments and harms

Three kinds of difficulty, and they are not the same thing.

• The clash — six apart, directly opposite. Rat against Horse, Ox against Goat, and so on. The reading is closer to the Western opposition than to a warning: two ends of one axis, each holding what the other is missing.
• The punishment — three apart. The hardest angle in the system: two temperaments that provoke each other's worst habit without either intending to.
• The harm — five apart. Not hostility but a mismatch of pace and expectation, showing up in small things long before it shows up in anything anybody would argue about.

None of the three is a verdict. Every one of them describes an angle, and people live at every angle there is.

The twelve, one at a time

Rat

First, and first by cunning rather than by right — the story has it hitching a ride on the Ox and jumping off at the finish. Quick, resourceful, alert to advantage and genuinely good in a crisis. The difficulty is a restlessness that reads as opportunism to people who were not watching closely.

Ox

The one that did the work and came second. Patient, methodical, immensely strong and not easily moved once it has decided. It is the most reliable animal on the wheel and the least interested in explaining itself, which is regularly mistaken for having nothing to say.

Tiger

Courage without much calculation. Charismatic, impulsive, protective of anybody it has decided is its own, and constitutionally unable to leave an injustice alone. Burns brightly and needs more rest than it will admit to.

Rabbit

The most conflict-averse of the twelve and the most quietly effective. Diplomatic, aesthetic, attentive to comfort, and far tougher than the reputation suggests — a Rabbit avoids a fight because it has already worked out how to win without one.

Dragon

The only mythical animal in the twelve and the most prestigious year to be born in, which measurably raises birth rates in Dragon years. Confident, generous, theatrical and impatient with detail. The shadow is a difficulty with anything that cannot be done at full size.

Snake

The thinker. Private, perceptive, elegant and slow to show a hand — the Snake knows considerably more about a situation than it has said. Where it goes wrong is in assuming everybody else is playing the same game.

Horse

Movement as a way of life. Energetic, sociable, direct, and unable to sit in a room that has stopped being interesting. Immensely good company and the hardest of the twelve to pin down to anything long-term.

Goat

Gentle, artistic and much more stubborn than it looks. The Goat builds a comfortable, beautiful, well-defended world and will absorb an enormous amount before it complains — and then complains all at once about something that happened months ago.

Monkey

The problem-solver and the trickster, and the tradition does not separate the two. Inventive, funny, endlessly curious, and prone to solving a problem in a way that creates a more interesting one.

Rooster

Precise, punctual and entirely unafraid of saying the thing. The Rooster notices what is wrong and mentions it, which is either the most useful trait in the room or the most exhausting, depending on whether you asked.

Dog

Loyalty as a first principle, and a strong sense of what is fair. Honest, protective, a worrier, and slow to trust — but once the Dog has decided about somebody, that decision holds through a great deal of evidence.

Pig

The last of the twelve, and the most at ease. Generous, sincere, fond of comfort and unusually free of side. It is the animal most likely to be taken advantage of and the least likely to become bitter about it.

The year does not begin in January

Worth repeating because it is the single most common error. Chinese New Year moves between 21 January and 20 February, and anybody born before it belongs to the previous animal year. A calculator that reads the Gregorian year is wrong for about one person in seven.

The tool on this site computes the boundary from the December solstice and the new moons that follow it, including the leap month, rather than looking it up — so it is right in January, right in February, and right in the awkward years where a leap month moves New Year a whole lunation.