Monkey personality
Tradition sees the Monkey as the zodiac's clever one: curious, inventive and quick-witted, with a talent for solving problems nobody else can crack. People born in Monkey years are read as playful and sociable, fast learners with a sense of humor and an appetite for anything new. The best-known Monkey in Chinese culture is Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of the novel Journey to the West, as brilliant as he is mischievous.
The shadow side is restlessness. Monkeys are read as easily bored, fond of a shortcut, and tempted to use their cleverness to get their way. Tradition's advice to the Monkey is to finish one project before starting three more, and to use its wits for others as much as for itself.
The Monkey in love and friendship
A Monkey is read as a fun, affectionate partner who needs a relationship that keeps it interested and gives it room to play. Tradition's best matches are the Rat and the Dragon, the Monkey's partners in the trio of animals four years apart: the Rat matches its resourcefulness, and the Dragon its energy and ambition. The Snake is the Monkey's secret friend, one of the six harmonious pairs, read as the calm, deep thinker who keeps a Monkey grounded.
The Tiger sits opposite the Monkey, six years away, and the pair is read as the classic clash: the Tiger wants to lead, and the Monkey will not be led. The Pig, one of the six harming pairs, is read as too trusting for a Monkey's games. These readings go by animal alone. Tradition also weighs each person's element, and the grid further down links to every other animal's page.
The Monkey at work
Tradition expects Monkeys to do well wherever quick thinking pays: invention and engineering, science, finance, trading, media, performing and sales. They are read as brilliant improvisers who learn any job fast. Repetitive work with nothing to figure out, and slow-moving hierarchies, are what tradition expects a Monkey to find hardest.
When is the next Year of the Monkey?
The next Year of the Monkey begins on January 26, 2028 and runs until February 12, 2029. It will be an Earth Monkey year, 戊申 wùshēn, the forty-fifth year of the sixty-year cycle; tradition reads Earth as bearing the Monkey's own Metal, making the Earth Monkey the most reliable and thoughtful Monkey. The last Year of the Monkey was a Fire Monkey year, from February 8, 2016 to January 27, 2017.
The Monkey in the Great Race
In the best-known story of how the zodiac got its order, the Jade Emperor held a race across a wide river, and the animals took their places in the order they finished. The Monkey, the Goat and the Rooster crossed together: the Rooster found a raft, and the Monkey and the Goat cleared away the weeds and steered it across. The three reached the bank one after another, and the Monkey took ninth place.
When does the Year of the Monkey begin?
Each Year of the Monkey starts at the Lunar New Year, the new moon that begins the first month of the Chinese calendar, which falls between January 21 and February 20. So Monkey years don't line up with calendar years: someone born on February 10, 1980 is an Earth Goat, because the Metal Monkey year began six days later, on February 16. The checker at the top of this page and the Chinese zodiac calculator both allow for this, and the table above gives the first and last day of every Monkey year since 1908.
Four Pillars astrology (BaZi) counts the year differently, from Lichun, the start of spring in the solar calendar, around February 4. Its Monkey years begin on that day instead, so for a few days either side of the Lunar New Year the two systems can disagree.