Where a Pig year starts and stops
The Chinese year begins at the second new moon after the December solstice, placing new year's day between 21 January and 20 February. The date moves considerably: 23 January in 2012, 25 January in 2020, 10 February in 2024, 17 February in 2026.
Because most western calculators split the animals at 1 January instead, everyone born in that six week gap is given the following animal rather than their own. That is about one birthday in eight. The standard case is a birth on 1 February 1988, listed everywhere as a Dragon and in truth a Rabbit, because the 1988 new year arrived on 17 February.
The Pig runs straight into the Rat at the end of the cycle, so a January birth at the close of a Pig year is one of the easiest to misplace. The check on this page computes the real boundary for the year in question and answers on that basis.
Pig years and the elements
A Pig year comes every twelve years. Recent ones are 1983, 1995, 2007 and 2019, and the next is 2031. Each begins at its new year date and finishes the day before the following new year, so it always covers parts of two Gregorian years.
Underneath the animals runs a cycle of five elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water, in blocks of two consecutive years. Ten years of elements against twelve of animals means a combination returns only every sixty years. 2019 was an Earth Pig year; 2007 was a Fire Pig. In ordinary use the element is part of the year's name, and it is the piece most often lost in translation.
A year is properly named with both parts, so it is an Earth Pig or a Fire Pig rather than a Pig on its own. Readings quoting the animal alone are working from an abbreviation.
Last in the race, and the reading taken from it
The Pig is a yin animal. In the Great Race it set off with the rest, then stopped for a meal and fell asleep afterwards, waking late and arriving twelfth. In some tellings it also paused to wash. Either way it finished the race, which is the part the tradition tends to emphasise.
What is read into the sign follows from that. The Pig is described as generous, easy-going, sincere and unbothered by status, someone who takes people at their word and enjoys the material side of life without apology. The same account calls it self-indulgent, slow to suspect a swindle and inclined to leave things until they are urgent. This is inherited interpretation of a year of birth, describing a cohort rather than a person.
Trines, the opposite, and the western comparison
The Pig shares a trine with the Rabbit and the Goat, animals four places apart that the tradition reads as tolerant, domestic and slow to pick a fight. Six places round the cycle is the Snake, the Pig's opposite, a pairing described as openness against concealment. Before any of that is treated as settled, traditional practice weighs the elements of the two years as well.
It is worth ending on the plain point. The animal cycle is not western astrology in another form. One is fixed by the year of birth in a lunisolar calendar, the other by where the Sun stood on the day. They rest on different calendars, answer different questions and make claims of different strength, so there is nothing between them that needs reconciling and neither supports the other.
Compatibility in the tradition is a statement about how two years are read together, and the element of each is what would change the verdict.
Questions people ask about this
When is the next Year of the Pig?
2031, twelve years after 2019. It will open at the lunisolar new year in late January or February, on a date fixed by the new moon rather than by the calendar.
What element was the 2019 Pig year?
Earth. The 2007 Pig year carried Fire, and since the element and animal cycles are of different lengths, each pairing returns only every sixty years.
Why is the Pig last?
The legend has it stopping to eat and then falling asleep, so it reached the Jade Emperor twelfth. Some versions add a stop to wash before the finish.
Is the Pig sometimes called the Boar?
Yes. The Japanese version of the cycle uses the wild boar for the twelfth animal. The dates and the position in the cycle are the same, only the animal differs.
Which animal is opposite the Pig?
The Snake, six places along the cycle. The tradition reads the pairing as a mismatch of manner, and it takes the element of each year into account as well.
Does my Pig year override my western sign?
Neither overrides the other, because they are not measuring the same thing. The animal comes from the lunisolar year and the western sign from the solar day.