卯
Year of the Rabbit
mǎo · 4 of 12 · the hours of 05:00 – 07:00
Gets what it wants without anyone noticing it was asked for.
Years of the rabbit
1939 · 1951 · 1963 · 1975 · 1987 · 1999 · 2011 · 2023 · 2035
Each one begins at that year's new year, not on 1 January — so a January birthday in one of these years belongs to the animal before.
The rabbit is the diplomat of the twelve: gentle in manner, careful with other people, and skilled at getting what it needs without a confrontation. Traditionally the luckiest of the signs, and the most concerned with comfort and a settled home.
The shadow is the same skill overused. A rabbit will route around a difficulty rather than through it, which works until the difficulty is the thing that actually needed saying.
In Japan the same branch is read u — The same branch, read as the hare. The twelve are the eto there, and they still name the hours, the directions and the years.
Which animal you actually are depends on the day you were born rather than the year on the certificate — work it out exactly, free, from the real lunisolar boundary.