What Chinese Zodiac Is 2004? Year of the Wood Monkey

2004 Lunar New Year: start and end dates

Lunar New Year opened the Wood Monkey year on January 22, 2004, and the year ran to February 8, 2005. So a birth date of Jan 22, 2004 or later counts as Wood Monkey, and so do early 2005 birthdays through Feb 8; births in 2004 before Jan 22 still belong to the Water Goat. That moving boundary comes from the lunisolar calendar, in which the new year starts with the second new moon after the winter solstice in most years, so its Gregorian date shifts by up to a month from one year to the next. Look sixty years either side and the pairing repeats: 1944 are Wood Monkey years too. That Thursday new year arrived with the Sun in Aquarius in the Western zodiac.

What the Wood Monkey is like

In a Wood Monkey year, the Monkey's ingenuity turns towards practical, helpful projects. Classical readings describe people born now as curious, collaborative and fond of teaching and inventing. Metal controlling Wood can create a push-and-pull between play and purpose. Mastering one skill at a time, and checking how jokes land, are the suggestions most often given. Their laughter tends to make workshops and classrooms livelier places.

In the five-element scheme, Wood belongs to the east and to the green energy of early spring, and that seasonal image shapes how it colours an animal sign. A Wood stem tends to soften sharp edges and add warmth, curiosity and a cooperative instinct. Traditional texts associate it with benevolence, growth and the wish to build something that lasts beyond the self. People born under a Wood stem are often portrayed as principled, open-handed and hopeful about others. The caution usually attached to Wood is a habit of spreading energy thinly, saying yes to every request and feeling quietly hurt when generosity is not returned in kind.

2004 in the animal cycle and in numerology

In numerology the year's digits come to 6, linked with home, care and responsibility, so a 6 year is read as one centred on family and commitments. The digits of 2004 add up to 6. The Monkey holds the ninth place among the twelve animals and its fixed element is Metal. Set beside the year's Wood stem, metal controls Wood, which readings use to describe how settled or stretched the combination feels. The year before was the Water Goat and the year after is the Wood Rooster.

Chinese almanacs name 2004 Jia-Shen, pairing the Wood stem Jia with the branch Shen. Both are Yang, as stem and branch always share a polarity, so of the hundred and twenty possible pairings only sixty ever occur, and each one names a single year in every cycle.