Chinese Zodiac Calculator 生肖計算

Enter your birth date — your zodiac animal, ganzhi year pillar and element are computed with the exact Lichun instant, so January–February births land in the right animal. Free, in your browser, zero network requests.

Year switches at the exact Lichun instant · not January 1 · not Chinese New Year

Why the boundary matters more than the animal

For about 50 weeks a year every calculator agrees. The disagreements all live in a narrow window around early February, where three conventions coexist:

• Exact Lichun instant (BaZi practice) — what this calculator uses; the instant is shown to the minute.
• Chinese New Year (folk practice) — the new moon of the first lunar month; can be up to two weeks before or after Lichun.
• January 1 (naive tools) — simply the Gregorian year; wrong for everyone born before Lichun.

This calculator prints the Lichun instant it applied, your distance from it, and the Chinese New Year date of your year — so you can see exactly why an answer might differ from another tool, instead of guessing. See the three-engine comparison for the same divergence demonstrated live.

FAQ

How does the Chinese zodiac calculator work?

Enter a birth date. The calculator computes the ganzhi (sexagenary) year pillar under the Lichun rule — the year switches at the exact astronomical Lichun instant (around February 4), not on January 1 and not at Chinese New Year. The animal is the branch of that year pillar, and the element comes from its heavenly stem.

Why do other zodiac calculators give me a different animal?

Three conventions coexist: switch at the exact Lichun instant (BaZi practice), at Chinese New Year (folk practice), or at January 1 (naive tools). For most of the year they agree, but for births in the boundary weeks — often up to two weeks apart — they can give different animals. This calculator uses the exact Lichun instant and shows you that instant, plus your date's distance from it, so you can see which side of the boundary you fall on.

I was born in January or February — which animal am I?

You are most likely the previous year's animal under the Lichun rule. For example, 2024's Lichun fell on 4 February at 16:27 Beijing time: a birth on 3 February 2024 belongs to the 2023 animal (Rabbit), while a birth on 5 February 2024 belongs to 2024 (Dragon). The calculator prints the exact instant it applied, so the answer is auditable rather than a guess.

What is a year pillar (ganzhi)?

The year pillar is one of the four pillars of BaZi: a two-character label made of a heavenly stem and an earthly branch, cycling through 60 combinations (for example 丙午). The branch gives the zodiac animal and the stem gives the element — Yang Fire for 丙, for instance.

Does this calculator cover all years?

Yes — the engine supports 1901–2199 and every year page on this site carries the kernel-computed Chinese New Year date, exact Lichun instant and leap-month flag. The zodiac index lists all twelve animals with every year from 1901 to 2100.

Is my birth date sent anywhere?

No. The calculation runs in your browser as WebAssembly — zero network requests after the page loads, and the shareable link encodes only the date you entered. The same kernel binary powers the public API.

Related tools

All zodiac years 1901–2100 · Kua number calculator · Flying star calculator · Date selection · True solar time · BaZi four pillars