The Rooster: why its place is in the evening

A rooster crows at daybreak. Its double hour in the Chinese calendar nevertheless falls between 5 and 7 in the evening, just where the afternoon ends. The shift puzzles anyone who reads about it for the first time. It has a thoroughly practical reason, and that reason says more about the daily life this calendar came out of than about the bird.

The hour when the count is taken

Tradition gives the reason for the placing only in passing: around this time the poultry comes back to the coop on its own. Anyone who keeps chickens knows how it goes. The birds are not driven in, they come. One stands by, watches, and in the watching sees whether they are all there.

So the picture that hangs in this place is a quiet one: no waking, no setting out, but a count at the end of the day. As the tenth of the twelve branches, the Rooster is given the west, the autumn and the metal phase as well. Nothing has to be interpreted to notice that all three details fall late: the direction of the setting Sun, the year running out, the hour before dark.

An eye for the one line

This position is the source of the trait the sign is credited with before any other. Anyone who counts as a Rooster reads an invoice and catches on the one line that does not add up. In a meeting they hear the half-sentence everyone else let pass. They notice that a picture has been hanging differently since yesterday.

At work this is a decidedly useful gift, and it is usually noticed only when it is missing: in contracts, in invoices, in procedures where a small mistake turns expensive. It becomes unpleasant as soon as the checking no longer has a purpose and every trifle weighs the same as the rest.

When something is finished

The standard is not turned outwards alone. This is exactly the part the short descriptions barely mention: what gets checked above all is one's own work, once more and then once more again. Handing it over is hard, because every pass turns up something that could be better.

Composure is no help against that, and it cannot be produced to order in any case; what helps is an appointment with oneself: finished is not a feeling, it is a moment. Anyone who settles in advance when they will hand the work over hands it over. Anyone who waits until it feels right waits a long time.

Being seen

The second attribution is the making of an entrance. The Rooster is said to show itself: in dress, in manner of speech, in the readiness to be the first to speak in a group. That is not vanity, at any rate not only. It is part of the same thing: anyone who looks closely wants to be looked at closely as well.

The price is on that same invoice. Anyone who stands out is measured, and measured by the very standard they hold up themselves. A mistake is held against them here for longer than against someone nobody ever expected anything from.

If you were born in the sign of the Rooster

The years are 1945 and 1957, then 1969, 1981 and 1993, then 2005 and 2017; the next Rooster year begins in 2029. A reservation goes with every list of this kind, because the start of the year in this calendar moves: 21 January at the earliest, 20 February at the latest. Anyone born before that still carries the animal of the previous year.

One thing never turns up in the lists of years, although it concerns far more people: the double hour holds regardless of the year. Anyone born between 5 and 7 in the evening has the Rooster standing in their chart, whatever animal stands over their year of birth. And because this detail changes every two hours and not every twelve months, you share it with far fewer people than your year animal. How the four details of a birth combine into one chart is set out under Chinese astrology.