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In Chinese tradition, each person has an animal associated with the year of his birth. Every twelve years, that person’s animal year comes around again, in what is known as the ‘fate year’. It is a year of caution and avoidance of mishaps, as people should be especially careful and attentive.

Children in northern China, when they become twelve years of age, traditionally wear red undergarments. Adults in their fate years wear red girdles, as a precaution against accidents. Some older people receive red belts and red trousers to wear from their juniors, while many people nowadays just wear a red string around the hips, under the clothing. People facing a fate year may be advised to visit a temple and appease the taisui, the god of the current constellation.

Western astrology has twelve signs, one for each month of the year. In Chinese astrology, the twelve astrological signs are not only different, being all animals, but also represent not just months but years, months, days and hours.

The animals are the mouse, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. Each animal matches one of the twelve Earthly branches (zi, chou, yin, mao, chen, si, wu, wei, shen, you, xu, hai), which are also used to designate the years. As well as the Earthly branches, there are the ten Heavenly Stems (jia, yi, bing, ding, wu, ji, geng, xin, ren, gui). Years are designated by the stem and the branch, so the first year is known as the year of jiazi (jia, stem, and zi, branch). This gives us the years yichou, bingyin, dingmao, wuchen, jisi, gengwu, xinwei, renshen, and guiyou. The next series of combinations starts with a combination of the first stem (jia) and the eleventh branch (xu). There are 60 different combinations, giving a cycle of 60 years, known as a jiazi. Within each jiazi, there are five cycles of twelve years; each year of the twelve year cycle is represented by one of the twelve animals.

Why were animals chosen to represent the twelve years, and why those particular animals? There isn’t a conclusive explanation for that. The animals of the Chinese zodiac are such an important part of Chinese culture, and have been for such a long time, that the original explanation has been lost. Ethnic groups in northern China first used the animals to represent the years, and the tradition spread from there during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD). But even before that, the animals were used to represent the hours of the day. A bamboo slip dating from the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) has figures of the twelve animals representing different times of the day. Almost 400 years later, the tradition of using animals for years had become widespread across the country.

One explanation for the use of animals for hours of the day was that each animal was active at different times of the day, so it represents the two-hour period in which it was most active. Other, more colorful explanations are found in Chinese folk tales. As the animals are used to label the hours of the day, Chinese astrologers use this fact to find a person’s secret animal, or truest animal, as this sign is based on the smallest denominator, a person’s birth hour.