Year of the Tiger
The Tiger is the third of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, the animal of the earthly branch yin. The most recent Year of the Tiger ran from 1 February 2022 to 21 January 2023; the next begins on 19 February 2034.
Meaning
The Tiger (虎 hǔ) stands for the third earthly branch, 寅 yín, which names the hour from 3 to 5 in the morning and the first month of the Chinese year, in the Hong Kong Observatory’s tables. Wang Chong, in the Lunheng of the 1st century AD, gave yin the element wood and the tiger as its animal, and because wood overcomes earth, the dog, the ox and the sheep, the animals of the earth branches, “are overpowered by the tiger”. The tiger eats people, Ming Wilson of the Victoria and Albert Museum writes, but it was also thought to eat demons, and so it has long been an animal that quells evil. The cycle is used across East and Southeast Asia and in the diaspora, and the tiger has its place in the Vietnamese cycle as well.
Origin and history
The pairing of yin and the tiger is among the oldest in the cycle. The chapter on thieves in the Qin day book (Rishu) from Shuihudi in Hubei, buried in 217 BC, names the thief of each day by an animal, and its list, as the People’s Weekly printed it in 2020, runs “子，鼠也。丑，牛也。寅，虎也”: zi is the rat, chou the ox, yin the tiger. Wang Chong’s Lunheng gives the same pairing three centuries later.
The tiger is also one of the four animals of the sky. Wang Chong writes that the West “is represented by metal, its constellation is the White Tiger”, while the East has the Blue (or Azure) Dragon, and he points out that when the dragon and the tiger meet, “they do not fight”. The four constellations are the four quarters into which the twenty-eight lunar mansions are divided, Forke notes.
Years of the Tiger
| Year | Element | Begins | Ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1926 | Fire | 13 February 1926 | 1 February 1927 |
| 1938 | Earth | 31 January 1938 | 18 February 1939 |
| 1950 | Metal | 17 February 1950 | 5 February 1951 |
| 1962 | Water | 5 February 1962 | 24 January 1963 |
| 1974 | Wood | 23 January 1974 | 10 February 1975 |
| 1986 | Fire | 9 February 1986 | 28 January 1987 |
| 1998 | Earth | 28 January 1998 | 15 February 1999 |
| 2010 | Metal | 14 February 2010 | 2 February 2011 |
| 2022 | Water | 1 February 2022 | 21 January 2023 |
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 Tiger begins on 19 February 2034. 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 25 January 2022 was born in the Year of the Ox, because the Year of the Tiger began on 1 February. 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.
How old is the tiger personality?
The sources disagree. Ming Wilson of the V&A wrote in 2011 that saying someone born in the Year of the Rabbit, his example, has such and such a character is “a fairly recent development”, with no mention of it in old Chinese texts. The Wuhan University historian Yan Changgui points to an older passage, in the Daoist Taiping jing of the Han: “寅申之岁，其人似虎”, a person born in a year of yin or shen is like a tiger, to be kept clean and seen seldom, and feared by many. Yan calls it one of the earliest texts to tie the stem and branch of a birth year to a person’s fortune. The popular modern reading he gives is short: people born in tiger years are brave.
The tiger against evil
The V&A has a stoneware pillow in the shape of a tiger from the Jin dynasty (1115–1234). Wilson explains that a tiger-shaped pillow was thought to protect the sleeper from malicious spirits at night.
Third in the race
In the race told as the origin of the order, Encyclopaedia Britannica records, the tiger came in third, after the rat and the ox and ahead of the rabbit.
Read next
- Next in Chinese zodiacYear of the RabbitThe 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.
- The same shape in The language of flowersLavenderThe flower dictionaries made lavender a flower of distrust, from an old belief that asps lived under it. Sarah Josepha Hale, in Boston, gave it the opposite: "acknowledgement".
See also
Year of the Ox, White Tiger (Baihu), Year of the Rat, Year of the Dragon, Year of the Snake, Year of the Horse.
Sources
- Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2022 (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2022, yearly text file, Hong Kong Observatory, yearly tables T1924e.txt to T2023e.txt, all checked: the date marked “1st Lunar Month” in each year of the Tiger and in the following year; title line of this file; the Lunar New Year date in this file
- Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2034 (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2034, yearly text file, Hong Kong Observatory, title line and the date marked “1st Lunar Month” (the next Year of the Tiger)
- 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
- 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”, pp. 105–106 and notes
- 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, the passage on the twelve animals
- 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; TIGER
- 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” and “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
- 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
- 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, paragraph 3
- 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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