1968 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Earth Monkey

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar, 1968 is the Year of the Earth Monkey (Wu-shen), running from January 30, 1968 to February 16, 1969 (inclusive). Because the Chinese year begins on Lunar New Year rather than January 1, people born from January 1 through January 29, 1968 belong to the preceding year of the Goat rather than the Monkey.

1968 Birth Date Lookup

Use the inclusive date ranges below to match a 1968 birth date to its Lunar New Year animal:

Gregorian Birth Date Range (Inclusive)	Chinese Zodiac Animal	Year Designation
January 1, 1968 – January 29, 1968	Goat	Previous lunar year (ending prior to 1968 Lunar New Year)
January 30, 1968 – February 16, 1969	Monkey	Wu-shen (Earth Monkey)

Why the Gregorian Year Alone Is Not Enough

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, aligning lunar months with the solar year so that Lunar New Year falls between late January and mid-February on the civil calendar. Looking only at the Gregorian year 1968 will misclassify anyone born during the first 29 days of January.

As a concrete hypothetical example: a person born on January 12, 1968 was born before the January 30 Lunar New Year boundary and belongs to the Goat year. Another person born on February 6, 1968 was born after the boundary and belongs to the Earth Monkey year.

Stem, Branch, and Five-Phase Element

Traditional Chinese year naming uses a 60-year cycle (sexagenary cycle) formed by combining ten heavenly stems with twelve earthly branches. While the Monkey returns every 12 years, it is not paired with the same element every 12 years; the full Earth Monkey (Wu-shen) designation repeats only once every 60 years.

For the lunar year starting January 30, 1968:

Heavenly stem: Wu, which corresponds to the Earth phase in traditional five-phase (Wu Xing) mapping.
Earthly branch: Shen, which corresponds to the Monkey.

Historically, animal-year names functioned as a calendar-keeping convention before later popular traditions associated birth years with personality traits.

How This Differs from Western Sun Signs and Four Pillars

It is important to distinguish this lookup from two other astrological systems:

Western Sun signs: Western tropical astrology divides the year into twelve roughly month-long signs based on the Sun's position along the ecliptic, whereas the Chinese zodiac assigns an animal to an entire lunisolar year.
Four Pillars (BaZi): In traditional Four Pillars practice, the year pillar changes at the solar term Li Chun (start of spring) and is read 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.

To explore all twelve animals and the 60-year stem-branch cycle, visit the Chinese Zodiac overview.

Methodology and Sources

Inclusive boundary dates and the Wu-shen header are sourced from the official Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) civil Gregorian-lunar calendar conversion tables for 1968 and 1969. The five-phase stem mapping (Wu = Earth) is verified from HKO stem-and-branch tables and academic literature on traditional stem correspondence (Yoo & Yoon, 2019, JKMC, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017). Historical and lunisolar calendar context comes from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich.