ShaoLan: The Chinese zodiac, explained

This is very interesting topic about Chinese Zodiac. 

Those years I am living in foreign country, one of the top question is about the zodiac. 

The speaker was right, asking a zodiac sign was a polite way of asking someone’s age. 

By revealing zodiac sign, people can be evaluated, e.g fortune or misfortune, personality, career prospects.

Westen countries have the signs divided into 12 months. The Chinese zodiac is a 12-year cycle labeled with animals. It starts with a Rat and end with a pig, and has no association with constellations (星座).

Chinese ancestors (祖先) constructed a very complicated theoretical framework based on inner yang, the five elements and the 12 zodiac animals.

Over thousands of years, this culture has affected people’s major decisions, such as naming, marriage, giving birth and attitude. 

The Chinese believe certain animals get on better than the others. Thus many parents choose specific years to give birth to babies. And even refer to the romantic relations. Some animals are natural enemies to others, for instance, pig and snake. 

The Chinese believe some animals are luckier than the others. Dragon, is a symbol for power, strength and wealth. In 2012, the year of Dragon, the birthrate in China, HongKong and Taiwan increased by 5%, about one million more babies. 

In Jan 2015, BBC and the Chinese government’s press release a peak of Cesarean sections (剖腹产). Because the parents tried to avoid having unlock Goat babies. 

Tiger is another undesirable animal, due to its volatile temperament (性情).

However, the speaker went through the Forbes top 300 richest peoples in the world, the Goat and Tiger are at the top of the chart, even higher than the Dragon.

The last interesting point was that many Chinese people made their investment decisions based on the zodiac sign index.