Chinese zodiac
Pig
Pig — Hai, the 12th of the twelve earthly branches. It comes round every twelve years, each time with the next of the five elements, so the same animal and element meet again every sixty years.
In Japan the twelfth animal is the wild boar (inoshishi), not the farmyard pig, and the character 猪 means boar in Japanese where in Chinese it means pig. In the race story the Pig comes last because it stopped to eat and then fell asleep.
The Pig's earthly branch
The branch, Hai (亥), is older than the Pig and names more than a year: it is also one of the twelve double hours of the traditional day, a month of the Chinese solar year and a point of the compass.
- Branch
- Hai 亥The 12th of twelve. The animal is written 猪.
- Polarity
- YinPaired only with the yin stems, so every Pig year starts in an odd-numbered calendar year.
- Element of the branch
- WaterThe Pig's own, the same every year. The element in the table below belongs to the year.
- Double hour
- 21:00–23:00Read today off the local clock. Traditionally kept by the sun, so noon fell in the middle of the Horse's double hour.
- Solar month opens
- 7 November 2026At Lidong, Start of Winter, when the sun reaches 225°. Beijing time, that has been 7 or 8 November in every year from 1920 to 2026.
- Bearing
- 330°Between west and north, counting clockwise from the Rat at due north.
- Triad
- Rabbit, Goat, PigThe three branches four apart, which the tradition groups under Wood.
- Opposite
- SnakeSix places on: the opposite hour, month and bearing.
The hours, bearings, triads and branch elements are the standard correspondences of the earthly branches. The month dates are worked out here from the sun's position, on the Beijing calendar, for every year from 1920 to 2026. What the solar terms are →
A January or early-February birthday can belong to the year before
The Year of the Pig does not begin on 1 January. In 2019 it began on 5 February. A baby born on 1 January 2019 — before that date — would be a Dog, not a Pig.
The new year falls between 21 January and 20 February, and until it arrives the previous animal is still in charge. Each year's own date is in the table below.
Every year of the Pig since 1920
| Year | Began on | Element |
|---|---|---|
| 1923 | 16 February | Water Pig |
| 1935 | 4 February | Wood Pig |
| 1947 | 22 January | Fire Pig |
| 1959 | 8 February | Earth Pig |
| 1971 | 27 January | Metal Pig |
| 1983 | 13 February | Water Pig |
| 1995 | 31 January | Wood Pig |
| 2007 | 18 February | Fire Pig |
| 2019 | 5 February | Earth Pig |
The animal repeats every twelve years; the element repeats every ten, so the same pairing — such as Earth Pig — is sixty years apart.