1963 Chinese zodiac sign: Water Rabbit

Chinese year 1963 begins on Friday, January 25, 1963, and ends on Wednesday, February 12, 1964, the day before the Year of the Wood Dragon begins. It has a full 384 days, because it is a leap year with 13 lunar months; the next one comes in 1966. The Chinese calendar adds the extra month roughly every two or three years so that it doesn't drift away from the seasons.

The year opens with the new moon on Friday, January 25, 1963 at 8:42 a.m. ET, which is 9:42 p.m. China Standard Time, so the date is the same in New York and in Beijing. The annular solar eclipse takes place at this same new moon.

The Lantern Festival, which closes the New Year celebrations, comes on the fifteenth day of the first month, so on Friday, February 8, 1963. The year's first full moon falls on Friday, February 8, 1963 at 9:52 a.m. ET.

It is year 40 of the sixty-year cycle that began in 1924 with the Wood Rat. In Chinese this year is called 癸卯 (guǐmǎo): the heavenly stem 癸 gives the element and the earthly branch 卯 the animal.

In Ba Zi astrology, the Four Pillars of Destiny, the year 1963 begins not at the lunar New Year but at the moment of lìchūn (立春, “start of spring”), when the Sun reaches 315° of ecliptic longitude: on Monday, February 4, 1963 at 8:07 a.m. Eastern Time. That is 10 days after Chinese New Year, so anyone born between January 25 and that moment already has the Water Rabbit sign in the lunar calendar but still the Water Tiger sign in Ba Zi.

This page and the calculator give your sign by the lunar calendar.

The Rabbit is the sign of gentleness and finesse. It has good taste, tact and a gift for smoothing over disputes, so it feels best wherever there is harmony.

Intuition, flexibility and a gift for persuasion. Water softens a sign and teaches it to go with the flow.

The Water element covers two years in a row, 1962 (yang) and 1963 (yin), and comes back every ten years: before that in 1952–1953, next in 1972–1973.

The Water Rabbit is the most sensitive version of this sign. Water deepens its empathy, so it often knows what someone feels before they say it, which is why people confide in it. It is gentle and a wonderful listener. But it is easily hurt, and when things get hard it withdraws instead of fighting.

In 2026, people born in 1963 turn 63 years old. The Year of the Fire Horse is running now, which tradition counts as a year with no special tie for the Rabbit. People born in 1963 reach their next běnmìngnián, the year of their own sign, in 2035, when they turn 72 years old.

The Rabbit comes back every 12 years, each time with a different element. The exact combination of 1963, the Water Rabbit, returns every 60 years: in 1903, 1963 and 2023.