1949 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Earth Ox

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar, 1949 is the Year of the Earth Ox (Ji-chou), lasting from January 29, 1949 to February 16, 1950 (inclusive). Because the zodiac year changes on Lunar New Year rather than January 1, people born from January 1 through January 28, 1949 belong to the previous year of the Rat instead of the Ox.

1949 Birth Date Lookup

Use the inclusive date ranges below to verify which zodiac animal applies to a 1949 birth date:

Gregorian Birth Date Range (Inclusive)	Chinese Zodiac Animal	Year Designation
January 1, 1949 – January 28, 1949	Rat	Previous lunar year (ending prior to 1949 Lunar New Year)
January 29, 1949 – February 16, 1950	Ox	Ji-chou (Earth Ox)

Why the Gregorian Year Alone Is Not Enough

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, aligning lunar months with the solar year, which places Lunar New Year on different Gregorian dates in late January or February each year. Checking only the Gregorian year 1949 will misclassify births during the first four weeks of January.

For a clear hypothetical example: a person born on January 14, 1949 was born before the January 29 Lunar New Year transition and falls under the Rat. A person born on February 4, 1949 was born after the transition and falls under the Earth Ox.

Stem, Branch, and Five-Phase Element

Each Chinese year name comes from a 60-year cycle (sexagenary cycle) formed by pairing ten heavenly stems with twelve earthly branches. While the Ox appears every 12 years, it does not carry the same element every 12 years; the exact Earth Ox (Ji-chou) combination repeats once every 60 years.

For the lunar year starting January 29, 1949:

Heavenly stem: Ji, associated with the Earth phase in traditional five-phase (Wu Xing) correspondence.
Earthly branch: Chou, associated with the Ox.

Historically, the twelve animals were used to record calendar years centuries before popular interpretive traditions treated birth years as personality indicators.

How This Differs from Western Sun Signs and Four Pillars

When looking up a birth year, note how this convention differs from two other traditions:

Western Sun signs: Western tropical astrology assigns signs by the Sun's position in roughly month-long intervals across the solar year, whereas the Chinese zodiac assigns animals to full lunisolar years.
Four Pillars (BaZi): Traditional Four Pillars astrology transitions the year pillar at the solar term Li Chun (start of spring) and reads the year alongside the month, day, and hour pillars. This page follows the civil Lunar New Year boundary for standard year lookup and is not a Four Pillars calculation.

Explore all twelve animals and how the 60-year cycle works on the Chinese Zodiac overview.

Methodology and Sources

Inclusive date boundaries and the Ji-chou year designation are verified from the official Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) civil Gregorian-lunar conversion tables for 1949 and 1950. The five-phase stem correspondence (Ji = Earth) is based on HKO stem-and-branch documentation and academic confirmation of traditional five-phase mapping (Yoo & Yoon, 2019, JKMC, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017). Background on lunisolar timekeeping and the animal cycle is sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich.