Snake Chinese Zodiac Sign

The Snake holds Si, the sixth branch, the late-morning hours from nine to eleven and the fourth solar month, which opens at Start of Summer. Fire is its fixed element, but Si holds three hidden stems — Bing, Geng and Wu, Fire with Metal and Earth beneath it — and that mixture is the key to how the sign is read. The surface is warmth and ease; the structure underneath is metal, which the tradition takes as the sign's capacity for cold assessment while appearing perfectly relaxed.

In Chinese usage the snake is the little dragon, xiao long, and the two share iconography, seasonal association and a reputation for hidden depth. The animal's habit of shedding its skin gives the sign its other stock theme: renewal by discarding what is finished. Descriptions of Si accordingly emphasise transformation on the sign's own schedule — a career changed, a circle of friends quietly replaced, a version of itself put down without announcement.

Si is credited with the clearest strategic sight in the twelve. The classical picture is of a sign that watches longer than others find comfortable, says less than it knows, and acts once — which is why the readings associate it with research, investigation, diagnosis and any work where the first move should be the correct one. Composure is the second theme: the Snake is described as unusually hard to panic and as keeping its voice level in situations that raise everyone else's. The third is taste for depth, in study, in conversation and in relationships, with a matching impatience for small talk.

Privacy is the strength and the trap. The traditional cautions describe a sign that withholds by default, tells people what they need rather than what is true, and lets a suspicion grow for months without testing it. Because Si is confident in its own analysis, it is also described as slow to revise a conclusion once formed, and as capable of a long, silent verdict on a person who never learns they were tried. Jealousy appears in the folk descriptions, and the almanac note is more specific: this branch sits in the Yin–Si–Shen punishment group, read as friction with allies, especially where obligation and money mix.

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 Snake 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.

Si's Six Harmony partner is the Monkey, but the same pair also stands in punishment and destruction, which the tradition calls combination with punishment inside it — an attraction the tables score in the middle rather than at the top. The Three Harmony frame is the metal trine with the Ox and the Rooster, read as the alliance of patience, precision and strategy, and in practice the Snake's strongest working relationships. Opposite sits the Pig, the Six Clash. The Tiger is in harm with Si and shares the Yin–Si–Shen punishment group.

Si's fixed element is Fire, so the traditional colours are red and purple, the numbers two and seven, and the direction due South in the five-element scheme, with South-southeast as the branch's own compass sector. Wood produces Fire, so green and teal, three and eight, and the East form the classical supporting set. As everywhere on this site, these are cultural correspondences rather than advice.

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