Copyright: chinese zodiac

While this zodiac is not exclusive to China, many often know it only as the Chinese Zodiac, explaining the tag.

In Asia, many cultures assign an animal to each and every year, in a continual 12 year cycle. Interestingly, this 12 year cycle is part of a larger 60 year cycle, with each year being assigned an element as well: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. In any 60 year cycle, there will only be one iteration of each animal-element combination. The combination of the year you are born in is said to determine some of your personality traits. That said, the elements are not usually represented in art.

In order:

Of these, there are some animal names that are different in some countries. For example, in Chinese, the word for goat, ram and sheep are all the same, while in Japanese culture, they specify that the animal is a sheep over a goat.

For the most part, these variations are pretty interchangeable. That said, some cultures do celebrate some alternative animals:

The Vietnamese replace the rabbit with the year of the cat, and the ox is, instead a water buffalo. Some replace the monkey with a turtle. In Malaysia, they also use the turtle, but also replace the pig or monkey with a mousedeer. Thai zodiac swaps a naga for the dragon. There are many variations across the world... and while we only have tags for the major 12 members of the zodiac, please feel free to create tags for any culturally specific members of the Eastern zodiac you may find.

Images and animations depicting celebrations of the Chinese New Year should be tagged with the aforementioned holiday's name.