Rabbit personality
Tradition sees the Rabbit as the zodiac's peacemaker: gentle, gracious and tactful, with good taste and a gift for making people feel at ease. People born in Rabbit years are read as kind and considerate, careful rather than rash, and happiest in a calm, beautiful home among people they trust. They are credited with good judgment and a sharper mind than their soft manner suggests.
The shadow side is caution. Rabbits are read as avoiding conflict at almost any cost, slow to make a decision, and easily hurt by criticism, so they can retreat when they should speak up. Tradition's advice to the Rabbit is to say what it wants, and to trust that a disagreement need not end a friendship.
The Rabbit in love and friendship
A Rabbit is read as a tender, attentive partner who needs security and quiet to flourish, and gives the same in return. Tradition's best matches are the Goat and the Pig, the Rabbit's partners in the trio of animals four years apart: the Goat shares its gentleness and love of beauty, and the Pig its warmth and generosity. The Dog is the Rabbit's secret friend, one of the six harmonious pairs, read as the loyal protector a Rabbit can rely on.
The Rooster sits opposite the Rabbit, six years away, and the pair is read as the classic clash: the Rooster's frankness hurts a sensitive Rabbit. The Dragon, one of the six harming pairs, is read as too loud and demanding for a Rabbit. 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 Rabbit at work
Tradition expects Rabbits to do well in work that calls for taste, tact and care: design and the arts, writing, diplomacy, counseling, teaching, hospitality and anything that makes people comfortable. They are read as thoughtful colleagues who smooth over friction. High-pressure, confrontational jobs are what tradition expects a Rabbit to find hardest.
When is the next Year of the Rabbit?
The next Year of the Rabbit begins on February 8, 2035 and runs until January 27, 2036. It will be a Wood Rabbit year, 乙卯 yǐmǎo, the fifty-second year of the sixty-year cycle; Wood is also the Rabbit's own element, so tradition reads it as the Rabbit doubled. The last Year of the Rabbit was a Water Rabbit year, from January 22, 2023 to February 9, 2024.
The Rabbit is also the animal of the Moon in Chinese myth: the Jade Rabbit (玉兔 Yùtù) lives there with the goddess Chang'e, pounding the elixir of immortality. China's lunar rovers, Yutu and Yutu-2, are named after it.
The Rabbit 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 Rabbit could not swim, so it hopped across on stepping stones and then onto a floating log that drifted it to the bank. In some tellings the Dragon, flying past, blew the log to shore. The Rabbit came fourth.
When does the Year of the Rabbit begin?
Each Year of the Rabbit 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 Rabbit years don't line up with calendar years: someone born on February 10, 1999 is an Earth Tiger, because the Earth Rabbit 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 Rabbit year since 1903.
Four Pillars astrology (BaZi) counts the year differently, from Lichun, the start of spring in the solar calendar, around February 4. Its Rabbit years begin on that day instead, so for a few days either side of the Lunar New Year the two systems can disagree.