Monkey

The Monkey in the twelve-animal cycle

The Monkey stands ninth among the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, following the Goat and coming before the Rooster. The cycle is an ordering of years: each animal takes its turn, and once all twelve have passed the sequence begins again. This way of naming years has been recorded for many centuries and is still in everyday use in China and, with local variations in the list of animals, in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia and among Chinese communities elsewhere.

The twelve animals correspond to the earthly branches of the traditional calendar, and the branch that carries the Monkey is also used for a division of the afternoon, for one of the lunar months, and for a direction on the compass. So the same term that names a Monkey year can, in older calendrical writing, name an hour or a season.

Alongside the animals runs a second series, the five elements. Each turn of the animal cycle meets a different element, so a particular animal-and-element pairing returns only after sixty years, and it is that longer round rather than the twelve-year one that gives a year its full traditional name. A Monkey year is therefore always a Monkey year of a specific element, and the elements come round in a fixed order.

What the tradition associates with the Monkey

In the tradition, the Monkey is associated above all with quickness of mind: inventiveness, curiosity, and a talent for finding the unexpected way through a problem. Traditional readings credit the sign with wit and good humour, with an ease in company, and with the kind of adaptability that makes an unfamiliar situation interesting rather than daunting. The tradition also links the Monkey with skill in learning by watching and by trying, and with a lightness that keeps difficulty from becoming heavy.

The tradition attaches sociability to the sign, and with it a liking for conversation, play and company. Readings carried in the tradition describe the Monkey as versatile, resourceful and confident in movement, willing to change course when a better course appears. Where the tradition records a strain, it is the restlessness that can accompany so much curiosity: an interest that moves on before a task is finished, and a cleverness that enjoys itself. Traditional accounts set that alongside the sign's warmth and generosity, treating the two as parts of one temperament.

In the wider culture, the most famous monkey in Chinese literature is Sun Wukong of Journey to the West, whose ingenuity, boldness and mischief many readers hold in mind when the sign is mentioned. The tradition does not identify the sign with that character, but the story has coloured how the Monkey's cleverness is pictured and talked about.

These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its years.

Marking a Monkey year

A zodiac year does not begin in January. It begins at the lunar new year, whose place in the Gregorian calendar shifts from one year to the next, and it ends the day before the following lunar new year. This matters for anyone working out a sign from a birthday: a birth in the first weeks of a Gregorian year often falls before the lunar new year and so belongs to the previous animal, not to the animal that gives the Gregorian year its popular name. The page's table above follows the observed lunar boundaries for this reason.

When a Monkey year comes in, the animal appears everywhere in the season's decoration: paper cuts in windows, printed greetings, commemorative stamps and coins, temple fair displays, and toys and sweets shaped like monkeys. Families exchange new year wishes that mention the animal of the incoming year, and shops and public spaces are dressed with its image through the festival weeks.

The sign is also part of ordinary conversation. Asking which animal someone belongs to is a familiar and polite way of placing them in the cycle, since the animal narrows a person's age to a span of twelve years. A year that returns to the animal of one's own birth has its own name and its own customs: relatives may give red clothing, a red belt or a small red ornament to be worn through that year, and gifts of this kind are a common way of marking the return.

Years of the Monkey

Each year begins at the lunar new year and ends the day before the next one.