Year of the Rabbit
The Rabbit is the fourth of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, the animal of the earthly branch mao. The most recent Year of the Rabbit ran from 22 January 2023 to 9 February 2024; the next begins on 8 February 2035. In Vietnam it is the year of the cat.
Meaning
The Rabbit (兔 tù) stands for the fourth earthly branch, 卯 mǎo, which names the hour from 5 to 7 in the morning in the Hong Kong Observatory’s tables. Some call it the hare, as Ming Wilson of the Victoria and Albert Museum notes, and Alfred Forke’s translation of Wang Chong’s Lunheng says hare too. In Chinese legend the moon is home to the lady Chang’e, to Wu Gang, forever felling a cassia tree, and to a rabbit that pounds the elixir of immortality, so the rabbit is the animal of the moon. The National Palace Museum in Taipei writes that rabbits were auspicious in ancient China. The cycle is used across East and Southeast Asia and in the diaspora; in Vietnam the fourth animal is the cat.
Origin and history
The rabbit is in the oldest list of the twelve, the chapter on thieves in the Qin day book (Rishu) from Shuihudi in Hubei, buried in 217 BC, which pairs 卯 with the rabbit, as it does in the Qin day book from Fangmatan in Gansu. In the 1st century AD Wang Chong used the pairs to test a theory. Mao is wood and you, the rooster’s branch, is metal, as the Huainanzi assigns them; metal overcomes wood, so “why does the cock not eat the hare?” he asks in the Lunheng.
Rabbits were omens at court. A Tang dynasty handbook of the Ministry of Rites, the National Palace Museum notes, judged a rabbit by its fur: “red rabbits are the most propitious; white rabbits are moderately propitious.” The official history of the Ming records that in the spring of 1562 a white rabbit gave birth, which the Ministry of Rites reported to the Imperial Ancestral Temple, and the court celebrated.
Years of the Rabbit
| Year | Element | Begins | Ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1927 | Fire | 2 February 1927 | 22 January 1928 |
| 1939 | Earth | 19 February 1939 | 7 February 1940 |
| 1951 | Metal | 6 February 1951 | 26 January 1952 |
| 1963 | Water | 25 January 1963 | 12 February 1964 |
| 1975 | Wood | 11 February 1975 | 30 January 1976 |
| 1987 | Fire | 29 January 1987 | 16 February 1988 |
| 1999 | Earth | 16 February 1999 | 4 February 2000 |
| 2011 | Metal | 3 February 2011 | 22 January 2012 |
| 2023 | Water | 22 January 2023 | 9 February 2024 |
Each year runs from one Lunar New Year to the day before the next, as the Hong Kong Observatory’s conversion tables give them; the next Year of the Rabbit begins on 8 February 2035. The element comes from the year’s heavenly stem, so it changes with the last digit of the year: Wood for years ending in 4 and 5, Fire for 6 and 7, Earth for 8 and 9, Metal for 0 and 1, and Water for 2 and 3 (the five elements). Someone born in January or early February before that year’s Lunar New Year belongs to the previous animal: a child born on 15 January 2023 was born in the Year of the Tiger, because the Year of the Rabbit began on 22 January. Some fortune-tellers count the change from the solar term Spring Commences (lichun, about 4 February) instead; the Observatory, and China’s national calendar standard of 2017, use the Lunar New Year.
The rabbit in the moon
The rabbit pounding medicine in the moon is an old image. The Palace Museum in Beijing quotes a Jin dynasty poem preserved in the Taiping yulan: “月中何有？白兔捣药”, what is in the moon? A white rabbit pounding medicine. Among the Palace Museum’s Qing jades is a set of the twelve branch animals with human bodies; the rabbit sits with one knee raised and a fan in its right hand. The museum explains that the rabbit of the twelve is usually shown holding a jade pestle, and that this one holds two leaves of the moon’s cassia tree instead, from the legend that whoever finds a leaf that falls from it will have endless riches. On the emperor’s robes the moon is a disc with a hare in it, on the shoulder: the Chester Beatty Library’s Qing dragon robe has the sun disc with a rooster on one shoulder and the moon disc with a hare on the other. Rabbits in the moon in other traditions are on the rabbit page.
Why Vietnam has a year of the cat
In Vietnam the fourth year is the cat’s, and in 2023, when China celebrated the Year of the Rabbit, Vietnamese streets were full of cat statues. Nguyen Hieu Tin, a specialist in traditional Vietnamese culture, gave AFP two explanations: cats are prized in rice country because they hunt the rats in the fields, and the Vietnamese did not want two years with similar animals, seeing the mouse and the rabbit as close. A third explanation is the sound of the word: the Chinese mao, for the rabbit’s branch, sounds like the Vietnamese mèo, cat. Encyclopaedia Britannica lists the cat among the Vietnamese variations of the cycle, with the buffalo for the ox.
Fourth in the race
In the race told as the origin of the order, Encyclopaedia Britannica records, the rabbit came fourth, after the tiger. The Wuhan University historian Yan Changgui lists the modern folk reading of character: people born in rabbit years are gentle, as tiger people are brave.
Read next
- Next in Chinese zodiacYear of the DragonThe Dragon is the fifth of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, the animal of the earthly branch chen, and the only one that is not a real animal. The most recent Year of the Dragon ran from 10 February 2024 to 28 January 2025; the next begins on 28 January 2036.
- The rabbit in the moon: the Chinese moon rabbit beside the hare in the moon of other traditionsRabbit symbolismIn Buddhist and Chinese tradition a hare or rabbit lives in the moon; in German and Pennsylvania Dutch custom the Easter hare brings the eggs; in Cherokee stories Rabbit is the trickster. In British folklore a hare crossing your path was unlucky, and witches were said to take a hare's shape.
See also
Year of the Tiger, Year of the Rat, Year of the Ox, Year of the Snake, Year of the Horse, Year of the Goat.
Sources
- Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2023 (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2023, yearly text file, Hong Kong Observatory, yearly tables T1924e.txt to T2024e.txt, all checked: the date marked “1st Lunar Month” in each year of the Rabbit and in the following year; title line of this file; the Lunar New Year date in this file
- Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2035 (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2035, yearly text file, Hong Kong Observatory, title line and the date marked “1st Lunar Month” (the next Year of the Rabbit)
- Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, “Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches”, Calendar pages, Hong Kong Observatory, opening paragraph; Table 3 (the 12 shichen); Table 4 (stems of the months)
- What year is it today? (Hui Tai-wai, Hong Kong Observatory), Hui Tai-wai, “What year is it today?”, Hong Kong Observatory educational resources, April 2018, Hong Kong Observatory, paragraphs 4 and 6
- Huainanzi, Tianwen xun 天文訓 (Chinese Wikisource), Huainanzi 淮南子, chapter 3 “天文訓” (Celestial Patterns), 2nd century BC; Chinese text on Wikisource, Wikisource (Chinese), the passage pairing stems and branches with the five elements
- The 12 zodiac animals at the V&A (Ming Wilson), Ming Wilson, “The 12 zodiac animals at the V&A”, V&A Blog (Imperial Chinese Robes from the Forbidden City), 1 February 2011, Victoria and Albert Museum, introduction; RABBIT
- Lun-hêng, part I (Wang Chong, tr. Alfred Forke, 1907), Wang Ch’ung, Lun-hêng, Part I: Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch’ung, translated by Alfred Forke (Leipzig, Shanghai, London, 1907), Internet Archive OCR text, Internet Archive, chapter “The Nature of Things”, p. 106
- Lunheng, chapter 14, Wu shi 物勢 (Wang Chong, Chinese Wikisource), Wang Chong 王充, Lunheng 論衡, chapter 14 “物勢” (The Nature of Things), 1st century AD; Chinese text on Wikisource, Wikisource (Chinese), Wu shi
- Bringing in the Year of the Rabbit (National Palace Museum, Southern Branch), National Palace Museum (Taipei), Southern Branch, exhibition text “Bringing in the Year of the Rabbit”, 2023, National Palace Museum, “Bringing in the Year of the Rabbit”
- 青玉十二辰——兔 (Palace Museum, Beijing), Palace Museum 故宫博物院, collection record 故00093578-4/12, “青玉十二辰——兔” (Qing dynasty jade rabbit of the twelve branches), Palace Museum (故宫博物院), object description and notes
- Reading a Dragon Robe (Chester Beatty, Google Arts & Culture), Chester Beatty, “Reading a Dragon Robe”, story on Google Arts & Culture, Chester Beatty, story text
- Why Vietnam Is Celebrating the Year of the Cat, Not the Rabbit (VOA / AFP), “Why Vietnam Is Celebrating the Year of the Cat, Not the Rabbit”, Voice of America (from AFP), January 2023, Voice of America, article text
- Chinese zodiac (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Frannie Comstock, “Chinese zodiac”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 29 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, History and legend; Personalities, meanings, and other variations
- 中国传统生肖文化探源 (Yan Changgui, People’s Tribune), Yan Changgui 晏昌贵 (School of History, Wuhan University), “中国传统生肖文化探源” (The origins of the traditional Chinese zodiac), 人民论坛 People’s Tribune, 16 October 2025, 人民论坛 People’s Tribune, “十二生肖溯源”; “十二生肖‘天地人’意涵的建构”
- 藏在博物馆里的鼠 (People’s Weekly), “藏在博物馆里的鼠” (Rats in the museum), 人民周刊 People’s Weekly, 4 March 2020, People’s Daily (人民网), paragraph 2
- 十二生肖起源可推至战国 (Fan Guodong, Chinanews / Wuhan Evening News), “十二生肖起源可推至战国 鼠身兼阴阳居首位”, interview with Fan Guodong 凡国栋, Wuhan Evening News 武汉晚报, reprinted by China News Service, 15 February 2015, China News Service (chinanews.com), interview text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 8, 2026. How we research
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