2023 Chinese zodiac sign: Water Rabbit

Chinese year 2023 begins on Sunday, January 22, 2023, and ends on Friday, February 9, 2024, 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 2025. 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 Saturday, January 21, 2023 at 3:53 p.m. ET. In Beijing it is already January 22, 4:53 a.m. China Standard Time, and the Beijing date sets New Year's Day, so the new year begins on January 22.

The Lantern Festival, which closes the New Year celebrations, comes on the fifteenth day of the first month, so on Sunday, February 5, 2023. The year's first full moon falls on Sunday, February 5, 2023 at 1:29 p.m. ET.

It is year 40 of the sixty-year cycle that began in 1984 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 2023 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 Friday, February 3, 2023 at 9:42 p.m. Eastern Time. That is 12 days after Chinese New Year, so anyone born between January 22 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, 2022 (yang) and 2023 (yin), and comes back every ten years: before that in 2012–2013, next in 2032–2033.

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 2023 turn 3 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 2023 reach their next běnmìngnián, the year of their own sign, in 2035, when they turn 12 years old.

The Rabbit comes back every 12 years, each time with a different element. The exact combination of 2023, the Water Rabbit, returns every 60 years: in 1963, 2023 and 2083.