Chinese Zodiac · 4 of 12
Born in a Year of the Rabbit? The year is where the card starts, not where it ends.
What are people born in the Year of the Rabbit like?
The Rabbit is the fourth of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. Its years begin at Lunar New Year, not January 1, so a January or early February birthday may belong to the animal before. Recent Rabbit years: 1999, 2011 and 2023. Each comes with one of five elements, so the same pair returns every sixty years.
The Rabbit is one of twelve. What is the Chinese zodiac, and where did the animals come from?
What it is
Your Chinese zodiac animal is the animal of the year you were born in, and the year is counted from Lunar New Year, not January 1. The Rabbit is the fourth of the twelve. It stands for the fourth Earthly Branch, written 卯 (mǎo), one of twelve signs Chinese calendars have used to number days, months, years and the hours of the day for more than three thousand years. 1,2
The animal is the easy half of a year’s name. The other half is one of ten Heavenly Stems, which come in five pairs: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The two lists step forward together, so a Rabbit year comes round every twelve years with the next element along, and any one element and animal meet only once in sixty years. Since 1948 the Rabbit years have been 1951 (Metal), 1963 (Water), 1975 (Wood), 1987 (Fire), 1999 (Earth), 2011 (Metal) and 2023 (Water). 3,4,1
Each stem is either yang or yin, and because the lists move in step, a yang stem only ever meets the odd-numbered branches. The Rabbit is number 4, so every Rabbit year is a yin year. 4,1
The branches name more than years. The Rabbit’s branch also names the two hours from 5 am to 7 am, the 2nd month of the old lunar calendar, and a direction on the compass: east. 4,1
A birth year is one part of a Chinese reading, not the whole of it. Practitioners read the year together with the day and hour of birth, which is why the animal on its own only goes so far. 1
This is the short version for one animal. How the twelve-year and sixty-year cycles work, and the whole history, is on the master page: What is the Chinese zodiac, and where did the animals come from?
The Rabbit in Chinese tradition
What museums and old stories make of the animal. The same for everyone born in its years.
The rabbit belongs to the moon. In legend a rabbit lives there with the goddess Chang’e, grinding her elixir with a mortar and pestle, and moon rabbits turn up on bronze mirrors, silks and court robes, including an emperor’s summer robe in the V&A. 5,6
Vietnam swapped the rabbit for a cat. Royal Museums Greenwich gives the usual explanation: the Chinese name for this branch sounds like “meo”, the Vietnamese word for cat. The Lam Museum adds that cats did not even exist in China when the zodiac animals first came about. 7,8
The character 兔 (tù) covers rabbits and hares, so some call it the Hare. 6
| Place in the cycle | 4 of 12 |
|---|---|
| In Chinese | 兔 (tù) |
| Earthly Branch | 卯 (mǎo) |
| Yin or yang | Yin, every time |
| Hours | 5 am to 7 am |
| Month of the lunar calendar | 2nd month, the one that holds the spring equinox |
| Compass | East, 90°, with north at 0° |
| Season | Spring |
| Last Rabbit year | 2023, Water Rabbit: January 22, 2023 to February 9, 2024 |
| Next Rabbit year | 2035 (twelve years on; past the end of the machine’s tables, which run to 2031) |
Where the Rabbit comes from
Era by era, with sources. The whole story of the twelve is on the master page, Where did the Chinese zodiac come from?
- Shangc. 1300–1050 BCEDiviners for the Shang kings carve questions on ox shoulder blades and turtle shells and date them by a sixty-day count built from ten Heavenly Stems and twelve Earthly Branches. The branches that will later carry the animals are already in use, as names for days. 2,9
- Qinc. 217 BCEA Qin official is buried at Shuihudi, in Hubei, with a “day book”, an almanac of good and bad days for everyday jobs. The Lam Museum dates a Chinese zodiac system to the Qin; the Macao Communications Museum says a fairly complete one already existed before it. 10,8,11
- Han1st century CEWang Chong (27–c. 100 CE), a sceptical scholar of the Eastern Han, writes the Lunheng, or Balanced Discussions. It is the oldest surviving book to list the same twelve animals in use today. 12,11
- Hanc. 100 CEYears start to be recorded by the twelve animals: the Hong Kong Observatory dates the custom to about 100 CE. By the Eastern Han, the Metropolitan Museum says, the order of the animals is settled. 13,14
- Tang618–907Potters model sets of the twelve animals with human bodies and animal heads, a style the V&A holds examples of. 6
- Across AsiaOver many centuriesThe calendar and its animals travel with Chinese influence and change on the way. Vietnam has a buffalo for the Ox and a cat for the Rabbit, Japan a wild boar for the Pig, Thailand a naga serpent for the Dragon, and Korea a sheep for the Goat. 14,7,15
- Republic1912Until 1912, Chinese years were officially counted in sixty-year cycles of stems and branches. The cycle carries on in almanacs, at New Year and in the year animal everyone knows. 6
- United States1992The US Postal Service issues a Year of the Rooster stamp designed by Clarence Lee, the first US stamp with Chinese characters on it. It sells so well that a Lunar New Year series follows. 16
- Today2023–2024The UN General Assembly lists Lunar New Year as a UN floating holiday from 2024, and UNESCO inscribes the Spring Festival on its list of the world’s intangible cultural heritage in December 2024. 17,18
- Today2023The Metropolitan Museum of Art marks the Water Rabbit year with Celebrating the Year of the Rabbit. 5
Worked out, not guessed
Calculated facts only, worked out the same way the machine does it.
- To find the animal for a year, take away 4 and divide by 12. A remainder of 3 means the Rabbit. Take 2023: 2023 − 4 = 2019, and 2019 ÷ 12 leaves 3.
- The element comes from the last digit of the year: 0 or 1 is Metal, 2 or 3 Water, 4 or 5 Wood, 6 or 7 Fire, 8 or 9 Earth. 2023 ends in 3, so it was a Water Rabbit year.
- Both rules count the Chinese year, which starts at Lunar New Year, on a new moon between January 21 and February 20. Born in January or February before that year’s new moon? Use the year before.
- The machine works out every Lunar New Year itself, from the new moons and the December solstice, on the Beijing calendar.
| Year | Element | Starts | Ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1927 | Fire | February 2, 1927 | January 22, 1928 |
| 1939 | Earth | February 19, 1939 | February 7, 1940 |
| 1951 | Metal | February 6, 1951 | January 26, 1952 |
| 1963 | Water | January 25, 1963 | February 12, 1964 |
| 1975 | Wood | February 11, 1975 | January 30, 1976 |
| 1987 | Fire | January 29, 1987 | February 16, 1988 |
| 1999 | Earth | February 16, 1999 | February 4, 2000 |
| 2011 | Metal | February 3, 2011 | January 22, 2012 |
| 2023 | Water | January 22, 2023 | February 9, 2024 |
The Great Race
A folk tale, told many ways. It explains the order of the animals, not where they came from.
The Rabbit could not swim, so it hopped across the river on stepping stones until the stones ran out.
It grabbed a floating log and drifted. In one version the passing Dragon blew the log to shore with a puff of breath, and the Rabbit finished fourth.
Other tellings swap the race for a banquet given by the Buddha, with the animals placed in the order they arrived. The Lam Museum, which tells its own version, is careful to add that it is only a story. 15,8
Friends and opposites
Old pairings from the almanacs. They describe how the system lines animals up, not how any two people will get on.
Chinese almanacs pair the animals by where they sit on the circle. Animals four places apart make a group of three, the “three harmonies” (sān hé) that tradition counts as natural allies. The Rabbit’s group is the Rabbit, the Goat and the Pig.
The animal straight across the circle, six places away, is the Rabbit’s opposite: the Rooster. Tradition calls the pair a clash (chōng), and reads it as two animals pulling in different directions rather than a verdict on anyone. These pairings have long been used in fortune-telling, including when families weighed up a match. 8
Every Rabbit reads this page. Only your card knows you.
Your card names your animal and its element from the exact Lunar New Year date, then reads it with your sun sign, your numbers and your sky.
What your card covers
See all six pages, sealedFold the pages back
1 Who you are
2 The machine says
3 Your sky
4 Love & your people
5 Work & money
6 Your year ahead
Sources
- Heaven Stems and Earth Branches, University of California San Diego (David K. Jordan). Read on .
- Oracle bone collection (Or 7694/1506-2125), British Library. Read on .
- What year is it today?, Hong Kong Observatory. Read on .
- Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (tables of stems, branches, directions, months and hours), Kenyon College, Department of Religion (course materials, Religion 270). Read on .
- Celebrating the Year of the Rabbit, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read on .
- The 12 zodiac animals at the V&A, Victoria and Albert Museum blog (Ming Wilson), 1 February 2011. Read on .
- Lunar New Year: dates, animals and the zodiac, Royal Museums Greenwich. Read on .
- The Chinese Zodiac, Timothy S. Y. Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University. Read on .
- Inscribed Plastron Ping 0063, Museum of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. Read on .
- Popular Culture and Books of Fate in Early China, International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (workshop, December 2012). Read on .
- Chinese Zodiac in Postage Stamps: Introduction, Macao Communications Museum. Read on .
- Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Alexus McLeod, University of Dayton). Read on .
- The 12 animals, Hong Kong Observatory. Read on .
- Set of twelve zodiac animals, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read on .
- What is the Chinese zodiac?, National Geographic (Erin Blakemore), 23 January 2026. Read on .
- Clarence Lee Stamps, Museum of Chinese in America. Read on .
- Spring Festival listed as UN floating holiday, The State Council of the People’s Republic of China (Xinhua), 22 December 2023. Read on .
- Spring festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of traditional new year, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (Representative List, inscribed 2024). Read on .