Year of the Rooster in the Chinese Zodiac

Its place in the zodiac

A page on chinaculture.org calls the Rooster “the tenth of the twelve Animal Years” and the only domestic fowl in the Chinese zodiac. The same page says that in agricultural societies the rooster has the important task of announcing the dawn.

A legend about the sun

A page on China.org.cn, by Zhou Jing, says that according to legend there were ten suns in the sky and a hero shot down nine of them, leaving only one that dared not rise. The legend goes on that a rooster was sent to call for the sun’s rise every morning, and that it was later voted one of the twelve zodiac animals.

What the rooster stands for

The National Palace Museum’s exhibition text points to word associations. In Chinese, it says, the character for “chicken” is “ji,” a homonym for “fortune,” and the chicken’s crest stands for “official” and its call for “fame.” As a result, it says, the ancients often considered the chicken an auspicious animal. It adds that the rooster was venerated as the “Bird of Virtues” for possessing civil talent, military skill, courage, benevolence and fidelity.

The China.org.cn page says the rooster traditionally symbolizes integrity, honesty, diligence and bravery.

Sayings and a custom

The same chinaculture.org page tells of Zu Ti and Liu Kun, two good friends in an Eastern Jin Dynasty story, who often urged each other to rise at cockcrow to practice sword dancing. The page says the phrase “Getting up to dance at cockcrow” later came to describe people of high ideals who do not delay in striving for self-improvement.

The page also says that in the past, a letter to be delivered at top speed customarily had up to three chicken feathers attached to the envelope, and urgent missives came to be known as “chicken feather letters.”

Chicken art and objects

For a special exhibition, the National Palace Museum selected seventeen works in its collection on the subject of chickens, paintings and one silk textile. Its text describes an anonymous Song dynasty hanging scroll, Hen and Chicks, that shows a hen leading five chicks as they peck for food, and says the subject alludes to the expression “May your five sons succeed in the civil service examinations.”

Of the exhibition’s Rooster by Xu Beihong, the museum notes that Japan had invaded China at the time it was painted, and says the artist was probably alluding to the expression “In the storm (of war), the rooster’s call (to attention) never ceases.”

A V&A blog post by Ming Wilson describes an earthenware cockerel from the Eastern Han dynasty. Wilson writes that the cockerel was a common domestic animal, and that models of it were often buried with a deceased person during the Han dynasty so that the person could continue to live in the same way as while alive.