1992 Chinese zodiac: the Water Monkey, renshen, metal of the sword edge

In 1992 the two rules met. Chinese New Year and Lichun fell on the same day, February 4, 1992, and split it by the hour: spring arrived at 21:48 that evening, Beijing time. A baby born on February 4 before 21:48 was a Water Monkey to the family and still a Metal Goat in a birth chart, held by the xinwei year of 1991; one born after it was a Water Monkey by both rules. All of January 1992 is a Metal Goat either way.

The agreement lasted one year. The next Chinese New Year came early, on January 23, 1993, and the next Lichun not until February 4, 1993 at 3:37, thirteen days after the Monkey year had ended on the calendar. A birth from January 23 to that moment in 1993 is therefore a Water Rooster to the family and still a Water Monkey in a chart. The Lichun page explains why the calendar keeps two rules, and both dates for any year from 1900 to 2100 are in the boundaries dataset.

Next to its neighbors the lunar year 1992 was plain: twelve months, no leap month, 354 days, from February 4, 1992 to January 22, 1993. It began on the Lichun day itself, so it holds exactly one start of spring, on its own first evening at 21:48 Beijing time; the next Lichun, February 4, 1993, came thirteen days after it had ended. That puts 1992 in the middle of a run of extremes. The lunar year before it, 1991, contained no Lichun at all, the pattern folk belief calls a widow year and avoids for weddings, and the one after it, 1993, contained two, with a leap month as well, the "double spring" that wedding planners like.

Gregorian 1992 was also a leap year, so some people have a February 29, 1992 birthday. They are Monkeys by both rules, since by then Chinese New Year and Lichun had both passed. On the lunar calendar the day was the twenty-sixth of the first month, which is the date a family keeping lunar birthdays would mark every year, February 29 or no February 29.

"Water Monkey" is shorthand. The year's name is 壬申, renshen, number 9 of the sixty: ren, yang Water, standing on shen, the Monkey's branch, which is Metal, the same filing the Huainanzi gives them before 139 BC. Metal feeds water in the generating cycle, so the branch nourishes its stem, and shen also hides a ren of its own among its three hidden stems, geng metal, ren water and wu earth. The year's water therefore has a root in the branch it stands on, and that root is what separates 1992 from 1993, whose water stands on bare metal. Renshen last came in 1932 and returns in 2052; the sixty names and the twenty-two characters they are built from each have a page.

The nayin of 1992, its "received sound," is metal of the sword edge; 1992 holds the yang half of it and 1993 the yin. In the Sanming Tonghui, the fortune-teller's manual Wan Minying finished in 1578, it gets the most martial entry of the thirty: the White Emperor holds power, it begins, hardness comes from a hundred firings, a red light shoots up at the Dipper and the Ox, a white blade congeals in frost and snow. This metal, it goes on, cannot be born without water, and it closes the entry with the plainest ranking in the book: the sword edge is the sharpest of all metals, and only water suits it, never fire.

The same book explains why this pair of years got the blade. It reads the twelve branches as a life, and it puts the Monkey's branch, shen, together with the Rooster's, you, at the harvest: the season of gathering in, when things are done growing and a person draws back and comes to rest. Shen and you are also the proper seat of metal in the five-element scheme, and the stems that fall on them in these two years, ren and gui, are both water. Metal in its own seat, quenched in water: the manual says that is the image of a sword edge, the point at which metal's usefulness reaches its peak. It then sets this pair against its opposite, the renyin and guimao years of gold leaf, and calls the difference one of hard and soft, which is a fair summary of a blade and a sheet of foil.

There is a line in the entry that people born in 1992 may enjoy. Metal likes its own kind, the manual says, so a renshen meeting a renshen is good, and if there is wood for the blade to work on, that is twisted roots and knotted joints, the hard timber that shows what a good tool is. The manual is talking about two pillars in one chart. Borrowed for two people born in the same year it makes a nice compliment. Read as a forecast it is nothing of the sort, and the manual's own author says in the same book that these images are figures the sages spoke in, not to be gripped too tightly. The blade, the water, the harvest: that is the year's name, and the name is where a birth chart starts rather than where it ends.

Of the three elements a 1992 birthday carries, two are Metal: the Monkey's branch and the sword-edge sound. The third is the stem's Water, the one a horoscope means by "Water Monkey," and both metals feed it. The Monkey's trine with the Rat and the Dragon is a Water trine too, so in 1992 the year element and the trine element agree, which happens for only one of the five kinds of Monkey. A bazi reader's own element is a fourth thing again, the day master; the elements page sorts out the rest.

Neither current year names anything for the Monkey. The 2026 Horse and the 2027 Goat stand near the Monkey on the wheel with no clash, harmony, harm or punishment between them, which is how most signs spend most years. The first flagged year ahead is 2028, the Earth Monkey year and the Monkey's own. Because the tables read the branch alone, a Monkey born in 1932 holds the same two blank cards.

The match tables read the animal, not the element, and for the Monkey they hold one real oddity. Its secret friend is the Snake, and Snake with Monkey is the only pair on the wheel that sits in the harmonies, the punishments and the destructions at once: allies by one table, at odds by two. Its clash, the Tiger, is doubled the other way, since Tiger and Monkey also share a punishment set. In nearby years that means Snakes born in 1989 and 2001, Tigers in 1986 and 1998 and Pigs, the harm, in 1983 and 1995. The 1993 Rooster next door is no relation at all, only a fellow Metal sign.

The Monkey returns every twelve years, the Water Monkey every sixty; start dates for each are on the Monkey page.