Year of the Pig

The Pig is the twelfth and final animal in the Chinese zodiac — the one that crossed the finish line dead last in the legendary Great Race. Far from a demotion, that last-place spot made the Pig the sign of someone who eats well, sleeps soundly and lets good fortune come to them. The next full Year of the Pig is 2031, a Metal Pig. If you were born in a Pig year, here’s what the sign actually means in Chinese culture — including the “Golden Pig” baby-boom belief that genuinely shifted hospital bookings in 2007 — and how to check whether you’re really a Pig at all.

Which years are the Year of the Pig?

The Pig comes around every 12 years. Each Pig year also carries one of the five elements, which runs on a longer 60-year cycle — so no two consecutive Pig years share the same element. Recent and upcoming Pig years:

Pig year	Element	Runs from → to (lunar)
1935	Wood	—
1947	Fire	—
1959	Earth	—
1971	Metal	—
1983	Water	—
1995	Wood	—
2007	Fire	—
2019	Earth	—
2031	Metal	Feb 23, 2031 → Feb 10, 2032
2043	Water	—

One catch that trips people up: the zodiac year starts at Chinese New Year, not January 1. So someone born in January or early February of a “Pig” year on paper might actually belong to the previous animal, the Dog. Don’t guess — run your exact birth date through our Chinese zodiac calculator, which handles that boundary for you.

When is the next Year of the Pig?

The next full Year of the Pig runs from Chinese New Year on February 23, 2031 to February 10, 2032 (the day before the following New Year). It’s a Metal Pig (辛亥 xīnhài) year — the Metal element lending the Pig’s normally easy-going nature a sharper, more determined edge. The last Metal Pig year before it was 1971, a 60-year gap, since the element cycle and the animal cycle only realign every six decades. A baby born in, say, March 2031 is a Metal Pig; a baby born in late January 2031 is still a Dog from the 2030 year.

The Pig personality

In the zodiac’s character sheet, the Pig is the warm-hearted realist: generous, easy-going, sincere, sociable and diligent. Pigs are said to be honest to a fault, slow to anger, and the friend who quietly picks up the bill. They enjoy the good things in life — food, comfort, company — without much guilt about it.

The flip side of all that warmth: Pigs are described as indulgent, naïve and sometimes gullible, prone to over-trusting people and over-treating themselves. Because they assume others are as straightforward as they are, they can be taken advantage of. The one-line version: a Pig would rather be cheated occasionally than go through life suspicious of everyone.

The five types of Pig

Because each Pig year carries one of the five elements, the “type” shades the base personality:

Element	Pig years	What it adds
Wood	1935 · 1995	Cooperative, easier-going, team-minded
Fire	1947 · 2007	The most intense — bold, sociable, generous to a fault
Earth	1959 · 2019	Steadier, more grounded and reliable
Metal	1971 · 2031	Driven, ambitious, blunt
Water	1983 · 2043	Adaptable, restless, a fast talker

2031 is 辛亥 — a Metal Pig year, the first since 1971.

Pig compatibility: best and worst matches

Traditionally, the Pig forms a harmonious trine with the Rabbit and the Goat, and a classic “six-harmony” pairing with the Tiger. Its hardest match is its direct opposite on the wheel, the Snake.

Match	Animals	Why
Best	Rabbit, Goat, Tiger	Shared warmth and values; trine + six-harmony
Tricky	Snake, Monkey	Snake is the direct clash (巳亥冲); Monkey’s scheming unsettles the trusting Pig

As with all zodiac compatibility, treat this as cultural folklore and a fun icebreaker, not a relationship verdict — plenty of happy couples are “incompatible” on paper.

Lucky numbers, colours and things for the Pig

By tradition, the Pig’s lucky signals are:

• Lucky numbers: 2, 5 and 8
• Lucky colours: yellow, grey and brown
• Lucky flowers: hydrangea and marigold
• Best avoided: the numbers 1, 7 and the colours red, blue and green

These show up in everyday ways during a Pig year — you’ll see yellow-and-gold New Year décor and plump, smiling pig motifs (a shorthand for wealth and plenty) on red envelopes, snack tins and shop windows.

Famous people born in the Year of the Pig

A spread of Pig-year births across the decades — scroll the timeline:

A roster heavy on actors and warm-hearted public figures fits the Pig’s sociable, well-liked reputation.

If you’re a Pig, your běnmìngnián is 2031

Here’s the counterintuitive part: the year of your own animal is considered one of the riskier years, not the luckiest. When 2031 comes around it will be your 本命年 (běnmìngnián) if you’re a Pig — tradition holds you’ve come full circle and “offended” Tai Sui, the god of the year, leaving you more exposed to bad luck.

The standard remedy is to wear red worn next to the skin — red underwear, socks or a belt, classically given to you by an older relative. By custom you put it on from New Year’s Eve and keep it on through at least the first days of the new year (many keep it up all year). In any given year, several signs are said to “offend Tai Sui” (犯太岁) alongside the year’s own animal, so Pigs won’t be the only ones reaching for the red socks in 2031. If you’re ever in China around a New Year and notice racks of red undergarments by every supermarket checkout, this is why.

The “Golden Pig” baby boom — and what really happened

Here’s the Pig’s most distinctive piece of folklore. Because the Pig symbolises wealth, plenty and honesty — a round, well-fed pig has long been Chinese shorthand for a prosperous household — some Pig years get talked up as a once-in-a-lifetime “Golden Pig” (金猪) year, supposedly destined to give children lifelong fortune. 2007 was the big one: Chinese media reported expectant parents racing to have a “Golden Pig baby,” and in Shanghai obstetric wards were booked solid, with some reports claiming nearly twice as many births planned as the year before.

So did the baby boom actually arrive? Mostly not — and Chinese commentators are refreshingly blunt about it. As one widely-upvoted Zhihu post put it, looking back at 2007: everyone around me of childbearing age was shouting that they had to have a Golden Pig baby, and we all assumed the population would explode — well, did it? The same writer notes the 2000 Dragon year actually saw births fall by 1.31 million versus the prior Rabbit year. The lesson locals draw: zodiac “lucky baby” hype moves hospital bookings and headlines far more than it moves the national birth rate.

The Pig occupies the twelfth position in the Chinese zodiac… associated with wealth and good fortune.

— Encyclopædia Britannica

There’s a wrinkle even some Chinese families argue over: by the traditional stem-branch reckoning, the real “Golden” (Metal) Pig years are 1971 and 2031 — 2007 was technically a Fire Pig. The “Golden Pig” label that swept 2007 owed more to marketing and the word “gold” sounding auspicious than to the actual element cycle.

Why the Pig came last in the Great Race

The zodiac order was set, the legend says, by a Great Race the Jade Emperor held to choose the twelve animals — and the Pig finished dead last. Why? The most-told version is that the Pig got hungry partway through, stopped to eat, then fell asleep, only ambling across the line after the other eleven had arrived. Far from shaming the Pig, Chinese culture reads this as completely on-brand: the Pig isn’t lazy so much as unhurried, content, and confident that things will work out. Coming twelfth never cost the Pig its reputation as one of the luckiest, best-liked signs.

What the Pig year means when you travel China

If you visit China during a Pig year, the animal is everywhere: chubby, smiling pig figures and the character 猪 (zhū) appear on shop windows, lanterns, stamps and snack tins, peaking around Chinese New Year. Because the Pig stands for abundance, the décor leans especially heavily on gold and on plenty-of-food imagery. Wondering when to actually go? The weeks bracketing the New Year are the most festive and the most crowded — see our best time to visit China guide before you book, and sort out visas and an eSIM ahead of time.

Find your exact Chinese zodiac sign

Not sure if you’re a Pig — or curious what element and stem-branch year you were born under? Enter your birth date in our Chinese zodiac calculator; it accounts for the New Year boundary so you get the right animal, even for a January birthday.

Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica — Chinese zodiac
• China Highlights — Year of the Pig
• La Jolla Mom — Golden Pig babies (2007)
• Zhihu — discussion of zodiac “lucky baby” years vs. actual birth rates