Year of the Ox: years, dates and elements

The Ox in the calendar

The Chou branch names the double hour from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., the deepest part of the night, and the twelfth lunar month, the last before the new year. That last month is the season of cleaning, settling debts and preparing food for the festival, so the Ox closes the farming year before the Tiger opens the next one with the first month.

In the legend of the great race, the Ox was the strongest swimmer and would have won if the Rat had not ridden on its back. The tale casts the Ox as the honest worker outwitted by a clever rival, a role it keeps in many proverbs. Older Chinese spring rituals used a clay ox to greet the season, and the image of the ox at the spring festival appears in paintings and woodblock prints.

The five Ox years of a lifetime

An Ox returns every twelve years, and the element changes each time, so a full cycle of five Ox years takes sixty years. Someone born in the Wood Ox year of 1985 saw the Fire Ox of 1997, the Earth Ox of 2009 and the Metal Ox of 2021, and will see the Water Ox of 2033 before the Wood Ox comes back in 2045. The elements page explains the order.

Watch the January dates

Ox years often start late: February 15, 1961 in 1961, February 20, 1985 in 1985, February 7, 1997 in 1997. A birth in January of those years still belongs to the Rat.

The Ox at a glance

Every year of the Ox, with exact dates

Each line is one lunar year, from its new year to the eve of the next. Over sixty years the Ox comes back five times, once with each element: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. A birth before the start date in that Gregorian year belongs to the Rat.