And here’s the explanation: The lunar calendar is a measure of the moon’s rotation around the earth. A year on the lunar calendar has 354 days (roughly).
What about the animals in the Chinese Calendar?
Depending on the year you are born in, you will have an animal “assigned” to you. The animals in the Chinese Calendar are 12 which means “your animal” will be coming when you are 12 years old, 24 years old, 36 years old .. and so on.
But why exactly these animals? 🤔
The 12 animals were chosen deliberately, after many revisions. The zodiac animals are either closely related to ancient Chinese people’s daily lives, or have lucky meanings.
The ox, horse, goat, rooster, pig, and dog are six of the main domestic animals raised by Chinese people. The other six animals: rat, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake and monkey are all loved by the Chinese people.
But wait.. it gets interesting here!
Usually an animal has the same number of claws on its front and rear legs. However the rat has four toes on its fore legs and five on its hind legs.
4+5=9, odd number (thats yang) and yang is dominant, so the Rat is classified as odd (yang) overall. Because of this difference the rat has been put as the first animal in the calendar.
Because of this difference the rat has been put as the first animal in the calendar.
Chinese Calendar animals and their connection with the hours of the day
It is widely known that each year is associated with a Chinese zodiac animal, but DID YOU KNOW that in Chinese culture the 12 zodiac animals are also associated with the hours of the day?
In ancient times, in order to tell the time, people divided a day into twelve 2-hour periods, and designated an animal to represent each period.
Even though this “hour thing” is not popular, according to Chinese astrology, a person’s personality and life is more decided by his/her birth hour than year and it is widely used for character analysis.
Watch the explanation of the Chinese Calendar, the animals, the zodiac… ⬇⬇⬇
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Great detail, CP. I didn’t know anything about this! I knew my animal, and not much more. That’s really interesting about the claw numbers, Super curious!!!
Especially the rat… Go figure… “What kind of sorcery is this” 😁
It goes to show… never trust a rat… 🙂 Poor rats!