2004 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Wood Monkey

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar, the Year of the Wood Monkey (Jia-shen) ran inclusively from January 22, 2004, through February 8, 2005.

Because the 2004 Lunar New Year fell on January 22, birthdays during the first three weeks of January 2004 belong to the preceding Goat year rather than the Monkey year.

2004 Birth Date Lookup

Match your exact birth date to the inclusive periods below in the Chinese zodiac calendar convention:

Birth Date Range (Inclusive)	Chinese Zodiac Sign	Stem-Branch Year
January 1, 2004 – January 21, 2004	Goat	Ending of the previous lunar year (Gui-wei)
January 22, 2004 – February 8, 2005	Wood Monkey	Jia-shen (Year of the Monkey)

Why the Gregorian Year Alone Is Not Enough

The Chinese calendar coordinates lunar months with the solar year, causing Lunar New Year to fall on a different Gregorian date each year. Knowing only that someone was born in "2004" is insufficient if their birthday is in January.

For a hypothetical example: a person born on January 15, 2004, falls before the Lunar New Year cutoff and has the Goat sign, whereas a person born on January 22, 2004, is born on the first day of the Wood Monkey year.

The 2004 Stem, Element, and 60-Year Cycle

Traditional Chinese year names follow a 60-year sexagenary cycle formed by pairing ten heavenly stems with twelve earthly branches (linked to the twelve animals), anchored in modern tables by Jia-zi (1984). While the Monkey returns every 12 years, its paired element changes with each 12-year return; the full Wood Monkey (Jia-shen) year recurs only once every 60 years.

In the official 2004 Hong Kong Observatory calendar header, the year is titled Jia-shen (Year of the Monkey). In the traditional five-phase (Wu Xing) system, the first heavenly stem Jia corresponds to Wood, making this lunar year the Year of the Wood Monkey.

How This Differs from Western Sun Signs and Four Pillars

Western Sun signs are determined by the Sun's position in the tropical zodiac across roughly 30-day windows, whereas a Chinese zodiac sign spans an entire lunisolar year.
Four Pillars (BaZi) systems commonly use the solar term Li Chun (early February) as the annual boundary and construct a four-pillar chart from the birth year, month, day, and hour. This lookup page follows the civil Lunar New Year boundary and is not a Four Pillars calculation.

Sources and Reference Basis

The inclusive dates and Jia-shen (Year of the Monkey) designation come from the official Hong Kong Observatory Gregorian-lunar conversion tables for 2004 and 2005. Stem-branch ordering follows the Hong Kong Observatory 60-year cycle reference, and the five-phase mapping (Jia = Wood) is documented in Yoo & Yoon (2019, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017), with historical calendar context from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich. These calendar designations belong to a traditional symbolic system, not scientific personality assessment.