Rabbit Chinese Zodiac Sign

The Rabbit holds Mao, the fourth branch, the sunrise hours from five to seven and the second solar month, which opens at Awakening of Insects and contains the spring equinox. Mao is the only wood branch with a single hidden stem, Yi, which makes it the purest Wood position in the system — growth already established rather than sprouting. Where the Tiger month is the risk of starting, the Rabbit month is the part of spring when the outcome is no longer in doubt and the work is to grow evenly.

The animal carries an unusual amount of cultural freight. The moon rabbit pounding the elixir is one of the oldest images in East Asian art, which attaches the sign to the moon, to night gardens and to the Mid-Autumn Festival; the Vietnamese zodiac replaces the rabbit with the cat, so the same branch has two animals depending on where the calendar is printed. Both readings pull the sign in the same direction: elegance, indirectness and self-protection.

Descriptions of Mao emphasise social intelligence exercised quietly. The sign is credited with sensing the temperature of a room and adjusting before anyone raises their voice, which the texts treat as a genuine skill rather than timidity — this is the branch associated with diplomats, negotiators and the person who makes an impossible dinner table work. Taste is the second recurring theme: an eye for proportion, material and appearance that shows up in homes, clothes and design work. The third is prudence. The proverb about the cunning hare keeping three burrows is quoted approvingly; having somewhere else to go is read as competence, not cowardice.

The cost of avoiding friction is that problems get managed rather than solved. The classical caution for Mao is conflict avoidance carried too far: agreements made to end an uncomfortable conversation, resentment stored instead of stated, and decisions deferred until circumstances make them. The sign is also described as sensitive to slights that were never intended, and as retreating from people rather than telling them what went wrong. Comfort is the other warning — a strong preference for pleasant surroundings is read as making the sign slow to accept a period of hardship even when it is the shortest route through.

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 Rabbit 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.

Mao's Six Harmony partner is the Dog, a pairing the tables read as combining into Fire and the tradition reads as trust: the guard and the diplomat. Its Three Harmony frame is the wood trine with the Pig and the Goat, a group associated with kindness, aesthetics and a shared dislike of conflict. Directly opposite is the Rooster, the Six Clash, the classical image of blunt speech meeting careful speech. The Dragon stands in harm to the Rabbit, the Horse in destruction, and Mao is also half of the Zi–Mao punishment with the Rat, which the texts label the punishment of discourtesy.

Mao's fixed element is Wood, giving the sign green and teal as its traditional colours, three and eight as its numbers, and due East as its direction — the branch sits exactly at East on the twenty-four mountain compass. The producing element is Water, so black and blue, one and six, and the North are the classical supporting set. These are traditional correspondences and nothing more.

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