Snake personality
Tradition sees the Snake as the zodiac's thinker: wise, intuitive and quietly determined, with a sharp eye for what other people miss. People born in Snake years are read as elegant and composed, private about their feelings and very good at choosing their moment. In Chinese the Snake is often called the "little dragon" (小龙 xiǎolóng), and it is credited with some of the Dragon's ambition, kept under a calmer surface.
The shadow side is secrecy. Snakes are read as slow to trust, prone to jealousy and suspicion, and capable of holding a grudge for a very long time. Tradition's advice to the Snake is to let people in a little sooner, and to share its plans before they are finished.
The Snake in love and friendship
A Snake is read as a devoted, intense partner who chooses carefully and commits deeply, sometimes possessively. Tradition's best matches are the Ox and the Rooster, the Snake's partners in the trio of animals four years apart: the Ox shares its patience and discretion, and the Rooster its ambition and eye for detail. The Monkey is the Snake's secret friend, one of the six harmonious pairs, read as the lively mind that draws a Snake out of its shell.
The Pig sits opposite the Snake, six years away, and the pair is read as the classic clash: the Pig's open-hearted trust meets the Snake's caution. The Tiger, one of the six harming pairs, is read as too blunt and impulsive for a Snake. 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 Snake at work
Tradition expects Snakes to do well in work that rewards depth and judgment: research and science, philosophy, psychology, finance, investigation and strategy. They are read as careful planners who see the long game. Noisy, shallow workplaces and pressure to decide before they are ready are what tradition expects a Snake to find hardest.
The Wood Snake year of 2025
The last Year of the Snake began on January 29, 2025 and ended on February 16, 2026. It was a Wood Snake year, 乙巳 yǐsì, the forty-second year of the sixty-year cycle; tradition reads Wood as feeding the Snake's own Fire, making the Wood Snake the most creative and steady Snake. The next Year of the Snake, a Fire Snake year, begins on February 15, 2037.
The Snake has one of China's best-loved folk tales to itself, the Legend of the White Snake, in which a snake spirit takes human form and falls in love with a young scholar.
The Snake 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 Snake could not win on strength, so it coiled itself around one of the Horse's hooves and rode across unnoticed. As the Horse reached the finish, the Snake slid off in front of it, startling the Horse, and slipped into sixth place.
When does the Year of the Snake begin?
Each Year of the Snake 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 Snake years don't line up with calendar years: someone born on February 10, 1977 is a Fire Dragon, because the Fire Snake year began eight days later, on February 18. 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 Snake year since 1905.
Four Pillars astrology (BaZi) counts the year differently, from Lichun, the start of spring in the solar calendar, around February 4. Its Snake years begin on that day instead, so for a few days either side of the Lunar New Year the two systems can disagree.