Pig

The Pig in the cycle of twelve

The Chinese zodiac names years rather than months, and it does so in a fixed round of twelve animals. The Pig stands last in that round. When its year ends, the sequence returns to the Rat and begins again, so the Pig marks both a completion and the turn toward a new count.

The order is old and stable, recorded across centuries of almanacs, histories and popular calendars, and it travelled with the calendar into Korea, Japan, Vietnam and much of Southeast Asia, where the same position in the cycle is sometimes given to a related animal. A widely told folk story explains the ordering as the outcome of a race or a summons among the animals, in which the Pig arrives at the end; the tale is a memory device as much as a legend, and versions of it differ from region to region.

The animals do not run alone. Each year also carries one of the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water — and because twelve animals and the elemental sequence do not repeat at the same rate, an animal returns paired with a different element each time. The two wheels only come back into alignment after a longer cycle of sixty years, which is why traditional records often name a year by animal and element together rather than by the animal by itself.

What the tradition says of the Pig

In the tradition, the Pig is associated with generosity and plain sincerity. It is described as open-handed, slow to suspect others, and content to take people at their word. Readings that circulate in almanacs and popular calendars link the sign with good humour, an easy sociability, and a willingness to give without careful accounting of what comes back.

The tradition also attaches diligence to the Pig, of a steady rather than a restless kind: work carried through to the end, without display. Alongside this, older readings connect the sign with domestic abundance and with the enjoyment of comfort, good food and the company of family — the Pig is a household animal in the agricultural world these readings come from, and a sign of a well-provisioned home. In the same tradition the sign is called tolerant and unhurried, inclined to keep the peace and to let small slights pass.

Where the tradition names a difficulty, it names trust extended too freely, and a fondness for ease that can outlast the moment for effort. These sit in the readings beside the qualities they shadow, and the tradition tends to treat them as the cost of an open temperament rather than as faults of their own. The Pig belongs to the yin half of the cycle in these accounts, which is spoken of as receptive and inward-turning rather than outward and assertive.

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

Customs of a Pig year

A zodiac year begins at the lunar new year, not at the start of the Gregorian year. The lunar new year falls in late winter, and its position shifts, so a birthday in the first weeks of a Gregorian year often belongs to the animal of the year before. Anyone born in that early stretch is best served by checking the boundary for their own birth year rather than assuming the calendar year and the zodiac year agree.

When the Pig's year comes round, its image appears in the ordinary decoration of the season: paper cuttings on windows, printed new year pictures, lanterns, greeting cards, commemorative stamps and coins. Families sweep and settle the house before the new year, share a reunion meal, and give money in red envelopes. Zodiac gifts and toys in the shape of the year's animal are common, and shops and public spaces are dressed accordingly.

The animal of one's birth year is a familiar way of speaking about age without stating it, since asking someone's sign places them within a round of twelve. When a person's own animal year returns, custom in many places calls for wearing something red — a cord at the wrist or waist, or a small red garment — often given by an older relative rather than bought for oneself. Children born in a given year are sometimes spoken of collectively as that year's babies, and the sign may be remembered in a family for its own sake, as part of how a birth is told and retold.

Years of the Pig

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