1993 Chinese zodiac: the Water Rooster, guiyou, metal of the sword edge

In 1993 Chinese New Year came early, on January 23, 1993, and Lichun kept its usual date, February 4, 1993 at 3:37 in the morning, Beijing time, which left twelve days on which the two rules name different animals. A baby born from January 23 to February 3 was a Water Rooster to the family and a Water Monkey in a birth chart, since the renshen year pillar runs until Lichun. Earlier in January, a Water Monkey by both.

At the close the gap was short. The Rooster year ran to February 9, 1994 by Chinese New Year and to February 4, 1994 at 9:30 by Lichun, so only a birth after that moment and up to February 9, 1994 counts as a Water Rooster at home but as a Wood Dog once a chart is cast. For any other year, the year-boundaries dataset has the two dates side by side, and the Lichun page has the reason there are two.

The Rooster year was a long one: 383 days, from January 23, 1993 to February 9, 1994, with a thirteenth month folded in. The extra month was a second third month, running from April 22 to May 20, 1993; the calendar adds one roughly seven times in nineteen years so that its moons do not drift away from the seasons. The length is also why the year caught Lichun twice, on February 4, 1993 at 3:37 in the morning, twelve days in, and on February 4, 1994 at 9:30, five days before the year closed.

Two Lichun days and a leap month make what folk belief calls double spring with a leap month, a year counted lucky for weddings; Malaysia's The Star reported couples crowding into the 2025 Snake year for the same reason. The opposite case, a short lunar year that contains no Lichun, is a widow year and is avoided; the South China Morning Post linked a feared dip in Chinese marriages in 2024 to exactly that. The year before 1993, the Monkey year of 1992, had a single Lichun on its first day, and the year after, 1994, had none.

If you were born between April 22 and May 20, 1993, your lunar birthday falls in the leap third month. Your sign is the Water Rooster like everyone else's; only the lunar birthday is unusual, since a leap third month last came in 1966 and returns in 2031 and 2050. Every other 1993 birthday has an ordinary lunar date, which the date converter finds for any year.

"Water Rooster" is shorthand. The year's name is 癸酉, guiyou, number 10 of the sixty: gui, yin Water, standing on you, the Rooster's branch, which is Metal; the Huainanzi puts gui with water and you with metal in one line of its astronomy chapter. The branch feeds the stem, as in 1992, but you hides one stem only, xin, yin metal, and no water at all. The year's water is supplied by its branch without having a root in it, the opposite of the renshen year before it. Guiyou last appeared in 1933 and comes back in 2053; the stems and branches page lists what every branch hides, and the sexagenary cycle page all sixty names.

1993 is the yin half of metal of the sword edge, the nayin or "received sound" it takes over from 1992. The 1992 page paraphrases the whole of the Sanming Tonghui entry, frost, snow and the White Emperor included. What the Ming manual says about both years comes down to its closing ranking: this is the sharpest of all metals, it cannot be born without water, and water suits it while fire does not.

Why the Rooster, of all creatures, carries a blade is a fair question, and the manual answers it without mentioning the bird at all. It reads the twelve branches as a human life, and the Rooster's branch, you, sits with the Monkey's at the harvest, the season when things are gathered in and a person withdraws and comes to rest. The west-facing pair of branches, you and shen, is where the five-element scheme seats metal, and 1993's stem, gui, is yin water; metal at home and tempered by water is the manual's whole definition of a blade at its most useful. The animal came to the branch centuries after the branch came to the calendar, so the Rooster inherited the sword rather than earning it, which is the kind of thing worth knowing before anyone sells you a "sword-edge Rooster personality."

Two guiyou pillars in one chart are good, the manual adds, because metal likes its own kind. Take that as a compliment for two people born in 1993 if you like; it was never a forecast. The image worth keeping is the contrast the manual draws with gold leaf, the renyin and guimao years: hard against soft. After that, a birth chart is what tells you which of your eight characters is actually you.

A 1993 birthday is Metal three ways and Water one way. The Rooster's branch is Metal, the sword-edge sound is Metal, and the Rooster's trine with the Ox and the Snake is the Metal trine; only the stem, the element a horoscope means by "Water Rooster," is Water. In 1992 the trine sided with the stem; in 1993 it sides with the branch. The zodiac elements page keeps these apart, and the element a bazi reader calls "you" is the day master, which the form above finds.

The Rooster gets two blank years. Neither the 2026 Horse nor the 2027 Goat stands in a named relation to you, the Rooster's branch, and the tradition counts that as unremarkable rather than good or bad. 2028, a Monkey year, is blank as well. The next flagged year is 2029, the Rooster's own, which comes doubled, since you is one of the four branches the punishment tables read against themselves.

For a 1993 Rooster the nearest real consequence of the match tables is next door. 1994 is a Dog year, and the Dog is the Rooster's harm, so a couple born in 1993 and 1994 sits in slow friction by the tables, while the 1992 Monkey on the other side is no relation at all, only a fellow Metal sign. The Rabbit, the clash, falls in 1987 and 1999; the Dragon, the secret friend, in 1988 and 2000; the Rat, the destruction, in 1984 and 1996. The tables read the animal and not the element, so these hold for any Rooster.

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