Chinese zodiac
Rabbit
Rabbit — Mao, the 4th 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 Vietnam the fourth animal is the cat (mèo), not the rabbit. One common explanation is that the branch's Vietnamese name, Mão, sounds like the word for cat, though no one has shown that this is how it happened. In Chinese folklore a rabbit lives on the Moon, pounding the elixir of immortality with a pestle, and the Moon Rabbit is still a figure of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Rabbit's earthly branch
The branch, Mao (卯), is older than the Rabbit 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
- Mao 卯The 4th of twelve. The animal is written 兔.
- Polarity
- YinPaired only with the yin stems, so every Rabbit year starts in an odd-numbered calendar year.
- Element of the branch
- WoodThe Rabbit's own, the same every year. The element in the table below belongs to the year.
- Double hour
- 05:00–07:00Read 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
- 5 March 2026At Jingzhe, Awakening of Insects, when the sun reaches 345°. Beijing time, that has been 5 or 6 March in every year from 1920 to 2026.
- Bearing
- 90°Due east.
- Triad
- Rabbit, Goat, PigThe three branches four apart, which the tradition groups under Wood.
- Opposite
- RoosterSix 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 Rabbit does not begin on 1 January. In 2023 it began on 22 January. A baby born on 1 January 2023 — before that date — would be a Tiger, not a Rabbit.
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 Rabbit since 1920
| Year | Began on | Element |
|---|---|---|
| 1927 | 2 February | Fire Rabbit |
| 1939 | 19 February | Earth Rabbit |
| 1951 | 6 February | Metal Rabbit |
| 1963 | 25 January | Water Rabbit |
| 1975 | 11 February | Wood Rabbit |
| 1987 | 29 January | Fire Rabbit |
| 1999 | 16 February | Earth Rabbit |
| 2011 | 3 February | Metal Rabbit |
| 2023 | 22 January | Water Rabbit |
The animal repeats every twelve years; the element repeats every ten, so the same pairing — such as Water Rabbit — is sixty years apart.