Chinese culture, personalized to you.
Find your zodiac, cast your bazi chart, get a Chinese name, and learn what a character really means. All sourced from the original classics, in plain English.
Where to begin
Five threads, one root. Meanings and names, the family names that carry them, the myths behind them, readings from the lunar calendar, and the feng shui of the rooms you live in.
Names & Symbols
What a character really means, how to write it, and the name that fits you.
II Last Names
The great family names, what they mean, and why one of them is spelled Chan, Tan, and Chen.
III Mythology
Dragons, the qilin, and the Monkey King, drawn from the classics with the original passages cited.
IV Zodiac & Fortune
Your sign, your element, and who you match with, computed from the true lunar calendar.
V Feng Shui
Your lucky directions and how to arrange a bedroom around them, worked out from your birth year.
Your reading, your name, your character.
Fortune Chinese Gender Predictor
The legendary palace chart, read honestly, with your lunar math shown in the open.
Bazi Bazi Calculator
Your Four Pillars, your decades, and the ten-year window the tradition would call yours.
Name Chinese Name Generator
A name matched to the sound of yours, with a real, well-omened meaning.
Calligraphy Calligraphy Generator
See any character in classic scripts, from ancient seal to flying cursive.
Calendar Lunar Calendar Converter
Every date has a second self. Find yours in both directions, leap months and all.
Age Chinese Age Calculator
Born at one, older at New Year. The count a grandmother would give.
Feng Shui Kua Number Calculator
Your trigram, your group, and the four directions that feed you.
Written to be trusted, and to be read.
Every entry is one native Chinese reader's work: primary texts, named translations, and an honest line between what is legend and what is recorded.
The name at the foot of every page, 祝君瑜, is mine, Julian in Chinese, picked more for meaning than sound; it even carries the jade that gives Jade Almanac its name. Said aloud, it is also a small pun, the exact sound of a blessing, wishing you well, so the byline doubles as a quiet best regards.
Common questions
How do I find my Chinese zodiac sign?
It comes from your birth year, with one catch that trips up most online charts: the Chinese year does not start on January 1. It begins at either Chinese New Year or the solar term Lichun in early February, depending on which system you follow, so anyone born in January or early February is routinely assigned the wrong animal. Our calculator handles that boundary properly and shows you which rule it used.
What is bazi, and how is it different from the Chinese zodiac?
Your zodiac sign is one character out of eight. Bazi, meaning "eight characters", is the full Chinese birth chart: four pillars for year, month, day and hour, each carrying two characters. The year animal everyone knows is a single pillar of that chart, which is why two people born in the same animal year can have almost nothing in common on paper. The day pillar, not the year, is the one traditional practice reads first.
Do I need my exact birth time?
For the zodiac animal, your kua number and most symbol questions, no: the year is enough. For a bazi chart the hour matters, because it sets the fourth pillar. If you do not know your birth time you can still read the other three pillars, and our calculator tells you which parts of your chart are affected rather than quietly inventing an hour.
What does a Chinese symbol like the one for love actually mean?
Usually more, and more specifically, than a one-word translation suggests. Most characters carry a range of senses shaped by their components and their history, and the popular story about where a character came from is often not the documented one. Each entry on this site traces the character to the classical record, shows the simplified and traditional forms, and says plainly where the folk explanation is wrong.
Is Jade Almanac free to use?
Yes. Every tool, entry and printable is free with no account required. The calculators run in your browser, the character practice sheets download without a signup, and there is no paywall on any of the writing.