The five pigs of the sixty-year cycle

Anyone who says they were born in the year of the pig has said only half of it. The animal always carries a heavenly stem with it, and with that one of the five phases. A fire pig and a water pig are two different starting positions, even if both name the same animal.

Why there are five and not ten

The Chinese calendar runs in two rows: ten heavenly stems, twelve earthly branches. Both move on one place year by year, and because yang and yin alternate in both rows, a yin branch never meets a yang stem. The pig is the twelfth branch, and it is yin. So there is always a yin stem above it — and there are five of those, one each for wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Only after sixty years does the same combination come round again.

The birth years

• Wood pig: 1935, 1995 — the next in 2055.
• Fire pig: 1947, 2007 — the next in 2067.
• Earth pig: 1959, 2019.
• Metal pig: 1911, 1971 — the next in 2031.
• Water pig: 1923, 1983 — the next in 2043.

Each of these years begins between late January and mid-February, not on 1 January. Anyone whose birthday falls in those weeks checks the date before deciding which year they belong to.

That the years are named in this way is no game in Chinese. The revolution that began in 1911 and put an end to the empire is still called the Xinhai Revolution: xin is the metal stem, hai the branch of the pig. The year bears its calendar name as a proper name — and sixty years later, in 1971, the calendar showed a metal pig once again.

What the stem above the branch changes

The branch of the pig carries water itself. What is interesting is therefore how the two levels stand to one another, and two rules of the five phases are enough for that: each feeds another, each controls a third. Water feeds wood, metal feeds water; earth controls water, water controls fire.

• Wood pig — the branch feeds the stem. What lies below finds expression above; the movement goes outwards.
• Metal pig — the stem feeds the branch. The direction is reversed: an inflow from above, a cohort with its own element in ample supply.
• Water pig — the same phase on both levels. Reinforcement without a counterweight, and too much of one phase does not count as an advantage in the tradition.
• Fire pig — water and fire stand in the controlling relation. Two forces in each other's way: a tension that can drive or wear down.
• Earth pig — earth dams water. A limit from above, a form that gives what flows something to hold to, or stops it up.

These are not judgements of character but relations. They describe how two levels of a single pillar deal with one another — no more than that.

Why the year is only the beginning

The year pillar is one of four; month, day and hour have a stem and a branch as well, and in practice it is the day stem that stands for the person. What holds a water-pig cohort together is therefore a colouring of the background and not a character.

In one respect, though, the pairing of stem and branch does have to do with a single life: it comes round again after sixty years, and still within a lifetime. Anyone born in 1959 as an earth pig went through the same combination a second time in 2019. In East Asia the sixtieth birthday is therefore a celebration of its own kind — the point at which the calendar has come all the way round once. How the four pillars are reckoned together is set out under Chinese astrology.