Pig Chinese Zodiac Sign

The Pig holds Hai, the twelfth and final branch, the late-evening hours from nine to eleven and the tenth solar month, which opens at Start of Winter. Water is its fixed element, and Hai holds Ren with Jia hidden beneath it — water with the first wood of the next cycle already inside, which readers treat as the sign's defining structure: an ending that already contains the beginning. The almanac places it at the point where the year's work is finished and what remains is to eat, rest and be generous with what was gathered.

The animal has none of the negative sense the English word carries. In Chinese village life the pig was the household's stored wealth, the centrepiece of a feast and a standard wedding gift; the character for home is a pig under a roof. Descriptions of Hai inherit that entirely, and they are among the warmest in the twelve: the sign is read as prosperity, hospitality and the willingness to share it.

Sincerity is the trait the tradition names first. The Pig is described as saying what it means, assuming the same of others, and being genuinely surprised by manipulation — which the texts treat as a form of moral clarity rather than naivety. Generosity follows, and it is practical generosity: food, money, time, a spare room. The sign is credited with an unusual ability to enjoy things without guilt and to make other people comfortable doing the same, which is why it appears in descriptions of hosts, cooks and the person who holds a friendship group together. Persistence is the underrated fourth trait: the hidden Wood in the branch gives Hai a quiet determination that outlasts flashier signs.

The classical cautions are all about defences. The Pig is described as trusting the wrong person twice, as lending on the strength of a story, and as discovering late that an arrangement was one-sided from the start. Because it dislikes conflict and prefers a pleasant atmosphere, it is read as slow to enforce its own boundaries and quick to make excuses for people who have already shown what they are. Indulgence is the second warning — comfort, food, spending — treated less as a vice than as a way of postponing something unpleasant. Hai is also one of the four self-punishing branches, and the reading is characteristically internal: the sign's harshest critic arrives only after the damage.

The animal repeats every twelve years but the stem above it repeats every ten, so each sign comes in five element variants and the same combination only returns after sixty years. Each variant below lists the Pig years it covers between 1900 and 2043.

Years in this table are calendar years. The zodiac year actually turns at Lichun (立春), around 4 February, not on 1 January and not on Chinese New Year — so anyone born in January or early February of a listed year may belong to the previous sign. Check a specific date and time with the zodiac calculator. Check a birth date against Lichun.

Hai's Six Harmony partner is the Tiger, the pair that combines into Wood — warmth supplying nerve with somewhere to come home to — although the same two branches also sit in the six destructions, so the tables score the tie high but not perfectly. The Three Harmony frame is the wood trine with the Rabbit and the Goat, the gentle alliance, and it is the company in which this sign is least likely to be taken advantage of. Directly opposite is the Snake, the Six Clash. The Monkey stands in harm with Hai, and the branch punishes itself when a second Hai appears in the chart.

Hai's fixed element is Water, so the sign's traditional colours are black and blue, its numbers one and six, and its direction due North in the five-element scheme, with North-northwest as the branch's own compass sector. Metal produces Water, so white and gold, four and nine, and the West are the classical supporting set. These are traditional correspondences and carry no claim about events.

This page describes the sign itself, which does not change from year to year. For what the 2027 Fire Goat year does to the Pig — the Tai Sui relationship, the five-element reading and a month-by-month table — see the year page. Pig in 2027.

Your animal is one of the eight characters in a birth chart, and the coarsest of them. The free four-pillars chart works out the other seven from your birth date, time and place.