Chinese Zodiac – Year of the Monkey

2016 is the Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese zodiac is not only popular in China, but also in several other East Asian countries including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Mongolia. Some of these countries use the lunar calendar like China, while Japan and others use the Western calendar. This means that in China and some other countries, it is still considered the Year of the Goat there until the 8th of February this year. In countries which use the Western calendar however, the year of the Monkey has already started.

In order to greet the New Year, one Japanese Zoo used their monkeys’ favorite food and distributed it to spell out the word “monkey”. The monkeys at the zoo all came over to eat, and in an instance they spelled out the Japanese word for “monkey” (サル) in large letters, as you can see in the video below.

The Chinese zodiac is called 生肖 (shēng xiào) in Chinese. It has 12 animals which repeat in a cycle, with each year being attributed a specific animal. The 12 animals are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.

Let’s learn how to say the 12 animals in Chinese.

To express a zodiac year, you simply add the Chinese word for year (年) at the end. For example, the Year of the Monkey can be expressed as follows.

Chinese people like to ask each other’s zodiac sign, which is the zodiac year you were born in. For example, if you were born in 1987, which was the Year of the Rabbit, your zodiac sign would be the rabbit. So what is your zodiac sign? This webpage lets you look up your sign by simply entering your birth date.

Now that you know your sign, let’s see how you can ask someone what their animal is, and how to respond.

If you are interested, you can learn more about the 12 Chinese zodiac signs in our previous post. Finally, we would like to wish you a Happy New Year of the Monkey!

This is the accompanying blog post for our newbie lesson “Monkeys Spell Out “Monkey”“.