Zodiac chart:
The Zodiac, also known as the Zodiac, is twelve kinds of animals in China that match the twelve earthly branches according to the year of birth, including rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, chickens, dogs and pigs. Xiao Shu refers to horses; Dragon; Tiger.
The zodiac is an intuitive representation of the twelve earthly branches, namely, Zi (mouse), Ugly (ox), Yin (tiger), Mao (rabbit), Chen (dragon), Si (snake), Wu (horse), Wei (sheep), Shen (monkey), You (chicken) and Xu (chicken). In modern times, more people regard the zodiac as the mascot of the Spring Festival and become a symbol of entertainment and cultural activities.
The origin of the zodiac is related to animal worship. According to the Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Shuihudi, Hubei Province and Fangmatan, Tianshui, Gansu Province, there was a relatively complete zodiac system in the pre-Qin period. The earliest handed down document that recorded the same Chinese zodiac as the modern one was Lun Heng written by Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
As a long-standing symbol of folk culture, the zodiac has left a lot of poems, Spring Festival couplets, paintings, calligraphy and paintings and folk arts and crafts that depict the image and symbolic meaning of the zodiac. Apart from China, many countries in the world issue stamps of the zodiac during the Spring Festival to express their wishes for the New Year in China.