Lucky numbers
4 9
Most recent year
2016
Branch position
9
The monkey in the cycle
The Year of the Monkey is the ninth of the twelve-year Chinese zodiac cycle, holding the earthly branch 申 (shēn). Monkey years are 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028 and 2040. The sign's fixed element is Metal and its polarity is yang. The zodiac year does not follow the Gregorian one, so the date matters: the 2016 Monkey year began on 8 February 2016, which means a baby born that January belongs to the Goat rather than the Monkey.
申 (shēn) covers the late afternoon, the double-hour from 3pm to 5pm, and sits west-southwest on the branch compass. In the Great Race the Monkey never swam. It arrived at the river with the Goat and the Rooster, and the three of them crossed on a raft the Rooster had spotted, the Monkey and the Goat hauling it clear of the weeds. Ninth place was the reward for cooperating; the Goat took eighth and the Rooster tenth off the same raft.
The element riding over the animal turns on its own ten-year cycle, keyed to the last digit of the year: 0 and 1 Metal, 2 and 3 Water, 4 and 5 Wood, 6 and 7 Fire, 8 and 9 Earth. 1992 was a Water Monkey and 2016 a Fire Monkey; 2028 will be an Earth Monkey. The branch keeps its fixed Metal underneath. The animal's name carries luck of its own: 猴 (hóu) is a homophone of 侯 (hóu), a marquis, which is why Chinese decorative art is full of monkeys riding horses, a rebus for 马上封侯 (mǎshàng fēng hóu), promotion to high office at once.
- 猴 · hóu
- 9 of 12
- Metal
- Yang
- 4, 9
- 2, 7
- White, Blue, Gold
- Chrysanthemum, Crape myrtle
- North, Northwest, West
- Leo — unrelated systems, see below
Monkey years, and the date each one starts
1932
from 6 Feb
1944
from 25 Jan
1956
from 12 Feb
1968
from 30 Jan
1980
from 16 Feb
1992
from 4 Feb
2004
from 22 Jan
2016
from 8 Feb
2028
from 26 Jan
2040
from 12 Feb
Each monkey year runs from the date shown until the day before the next lunar new year. Born on 10 January 2016? You are not a monkey; that year had not started yet. The full year table covers 1924 to 2044 if you need to check a different year.
What the tradition says about monkey people
Chinese astrology describes Monkey-year people as quick. Quick to see the shape of a problem, quick with a joke, quick to find the route around an obstacle. Inventiveness and curiosity lead every traditional description, along with an ease in cities and in company. The tradition reads the sign as a fast learner rather than a patient one, and credits it with the sort of nerve that takes on a challenge mainly to find out whether the thing can be done at all.
The criticisms are consistent across sources. A Monkey is called restless, easily bored and inclined to cut corners, and the same cleverness older texts admire gets renamed slyness once it is aimed at getting round a rule. Impatience with anything methodical comes up repeatedly, as does vanity. Practical jokes appear on every list, sometimes as charm and sometimes as the reason nobody hands the sign anything delicate. It is a character sketch, not a description of real people born in 1980.
Why 4, 9
4 as a lucky number looks like a mistake, so it is worth explaining rather than skipping past. The Monkey's numbers line up with the He Tu (河图), the chart pairing each of the five elements with two digits: 1 and 6 Water, 2 and 7 Fire, 3 and 8 Wood, 4 and 9 Metal, 5 and 10 Earth. Metal is the Monkey's fixed element, so 4 and 9 are the sign's own pair. That reading does not cancel the general taboo. 四 (sì) still sits close to 死 (sǐ), death, and Chinese lifts still skip the fourth floor.
9 needs no defending. 九 (jiǔ) is a homophone of 久 (jiǔ), lasting a long time, and imperial usage reserved the number to the emperor, which is why the great gates of the Forbidden City carry their door studs in nine-by-nine grids. On the unlucky side the same chart gives 2 and 7 to Fire, and Fire melts Metal in the controlling cycle, so the Metal sign is told to avoid them. That reverses the Horse's list exactly. Not every source runs these numbers, though. Some publish 2 and 3 as the Monkey's lucky pair, the flat opposite of the Metal reading, with no mechanism stated.
Lucky
4 9
Chinese number luck runs largely on homophones. 八 bā (8) sits close to 發 fā, to prosper; 四 sì (4) sits close to 死 sǐ, death. The Chinese numbers page works through the whole set.
Monkey compatibility
Monkey at work and in love
Monkey — work and money
Work the tradition matches to the Monkey rewards fast pattern recognition. Trading, accountancy, engineering, science, air traffic control, film directing and the jewellery trade all appear on the standard lists, which looks like a random mix until you notice what they share: quick decisions with visible results. Sales and diplomacy show up as well, on the reading that the sign talks its way into and back out of situations without much effort.
The warnings run the other way. Roles built on patience and repetition, the ones asking the same careful thing every day for years, are what traditional readings tell the Monkey to stay away from. Older texts also mention a habit of overestimating how much can be done quickly, which they treat as the sign's characteristic professional error. None of this is career guidance in any usable sense; it is folklore extrapolated from a character sketch.
Monkey — love and family
Chinese astrology reads the Monkey as good company and hard to pin down. Traditional descriptions have the sign winning people over fast and then going restless once the novelty settles, and they warn that the wit which attracted a partner gets used unkindly in an argument. What the same readings say a Monkey wants is someone difficult to bore. Quiet, undemanding devotion is not what the sign is described as looking for, however well it might work out.
The Monkey's trine (三合) holds the Rat and the Dragon, three branches spaced four apart around the twelve, which classical astrology treats as a matched set. Its clash (六冲) is the Tiger, 申 against 寅, the branch six places away and therefore directly opposite on the circle. Separately, the 六合 harmony joins 申 with 巳, the Monkey with the Snake, which explains why the Snake keeps appearing on compatibility lists that otherwise have nothing to do with the trine.
The Leo question
Charts that pair the monkey with Leo are matching the monkey's earthly branch to the solar month it governs in the traditional calendar. That is a real correspondence inside Chinese timekeeping. It is not a claim that the two astrologies agree, because they were built in different places for different purposes and neither borrowed from the other. Treat it as a curiosity rather than a second opinion on your western sign.
Year of the Monkey — frequently asked
4 and 9, with 2 and 7 listed as unlucky. The 4 surprises people, since it is the number Chinese speakers avoid hardest. It is on the list because the He Tu chart pairs 4 and 9 with Metal, and Metal is the Monkey's fixed element.
1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028 and 2040, each one twelve years after the last.
The Rat and the Dragon, its trine partners, and the Snake through the separate 六合 pairing. The Tiger is the clash, sitting directly opposite in the cycle. These are relationships between branches on a diagram, not predictions about couples.
No. The 1992 Monkey year began on 4 February, so that birthday still falls inside the Goat year. Anyone born in January or the first half of February should look up the lunar new year date for their birth year before settling on a sign.
Not in any meaningful sense. It comes from laying the twelve earthly branches over the twelve solar months, which produces one-to-one pairs by arithmetic alone. Chinese and western astrology grew up separately with no shared source, so the pairing is a convenience for English-language readers and nothing more.