Year of the Rabbit: Calendar Boundaries, Elements, and Cycle Place

By the Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese zodiac, the Rabbit is the fourth of the twelve animals, corresponding to the fourth Earthly Branch (Mao). Because the Chinese calendar is lunisolar, a Year of the Rabbit begins on Lunar New Year's Day—falling in January or February—and ends on the day before the following Lunar New Year.

If you were born in a Gregorian year associated with the Rabbit, such as 1987, 1999, or 2011, your zodiac animal depends on whether your birthday fell before or on/after Lunar New Year. Birth dates in January or February prior to the Lunar New Year start date belong to the preceding Year of the Tiger.

Position in the 12-Animal and 60-Year Cycles

Within the traditional twelve-animal cycle, the Rabbit (Mao) holds the fourth position, coming immediately after the third animal, the Tiger (Yin), and immediately before the fifth animal, the Dragon (Chen).

In the 60-year sexagenary cycle (Ganzhi), the fourth Earthly Branch (Mao) pairs with the five even-numbered Heavenly Stems (Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin, Gui). Every 12 years, the Rabbit returns under the next element in the stem sequence, completing a full 60-year rotation before the same stem-branch pair repeats.

Verified Example Years of the Rabbit (Non-Exhaustive)

The table below presents only the verified Rabbit years included in our current Hong Kong Observatory reference dataset. It is explicitly non-exhaustive and does not list earlier or later Rabbit years outside this verified subset.

How to Determine Whether Your Birth Date Falls in a Listed Rabbit Year

To verify your birth year in the table above, match your full birth date (year, month, and day) against the inclusive Start Date and End Date range in each row, including a row that started in the preceding Gregorian year for January and February births. You can follow the Year Detail Link in the final column (1987 Details, 1999 Details, or 2011 Details) to view the individual conversion record for that year.

Consider these three hypothetical examples:

• Hypothetical birth on February 5, 1999: The 1999 Ji-mao Rabbit year began on February 16, 1999. Because February 5 falls eleven days before Lunar New Year, that date belongs to the preceding Wu-yin Earth Tiger year (1998 Details, which ended on February 15, 1999).
• Hypothetical birth on February 16, 1999: Because February 16, 1999, is Lunar New Year's Day, anyone born on that date through February 4, 2000, belongs to the Ji-mao Earth Rabbit year (1999 Details).
• Hypothetical birth on January 15, 2012: Although the Gregorian calendar year is 2012, the 2011 Xin-mao Metal Rabbit year continued through January 22, 2012 (the 2012 Dragon year began on January 23, 2012). Therefore, January 15, 2012, belongs to the 2011 Metal Rabbit year (2011 Details).

Five-Element Variation Across Rabbit Years

In the 60-year cycle, the Heavenly Stem paired with Mao determines the year's element. In our three consecutive verified Rabbit years (1987, 1999, and 2011), you can see three steps of the stem-element progression:

• Fire Rabbit (Ding-mao, 1987): The Heavenly Stem Ding corresponds to Fire.
• Earth Rabbit (Ji-mao, 1999): Twelve years later, the stem advances to Ji, which corresponds to Earth.
• Metal Rabbit (Xin-mao, 2011): Another twelve years later, the stem advances to Xin, which corresponds to Metal.

(In the full 60-year cycle, the Rabbit also pairs with Gui for Water and Yi for Wood in years outside our current verified table subset.)

Cultural Context and Interpretive Limits

Historical artifacts and texts—including Han-dynasty records and Tang-dynasty funerary figures highlighted by the Victoria and Albert Museum—attest to the antiquity of the twelve-animal cycle as part of Chinese timekeeping. By contrast, popular horoscopes that assign fixed personality traits, lucky colors, or relationship compatibility to people born in a Rabbit year are a much more recent cultural development, and the story of the animals racing across a river is folklore rather than history.

When using this reference guide, keep two boundaries in mind:

• Civil Calendar vs. Four Pillars (BaZi): These start and end dates follow the civil Lunar New Year published by the Hong Kong Observatory. They do not reflect the solar term Li Chun used in Four Pillars (BaZi) astrology, nor do they constitute a full four-pillar birth chart.
• Symbolic Framework: Zodiac systems are symbolic cultural traditions, not scientifically validated tools for diagnosing personality or predicting future events.

Sources and Reference Methodology

Start dates, end dates, and stem-branch headers (Ding-mao, Ji-mao, Xin-mao) are verified directly from the official Hong Kong Observatory Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Tables (T1987e.txt, T1988e.txt, T1999e.txt, T2000e.txt, T2011e.txt, T2012e.txt) and HKO Stems and Branches documentation. The mapping of Heavenly Stems to the Five Elements follows Yoo & Yoon (2019, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017 abstract, used strictly for cultural stem-element nomenclature). Historical and calendar context draws on the Victoria and Albert Museum (updated April 17, 2024) and Royal Museums Greenwich.