As the world gears up for the Lunar New Year, many people are looking to the zodiac to see what the Year of the Rabbit will bring in 2023.
The zodiac, which is based on a 12-year cycle and assigns an animal to each year, is an important aspect of Chinese culture and is believed to influence a person’s characteristics and future.
The Rabbit is known for peace, diplomacy and luck, but there are also different interpretations of the zodiac based on location, such as the Vietnamese zodiac, which replaces the rabbit with the cat.
The coming year is also an uncommon year where the Chinese and Vietnamese animals differ. As people look ahead to 2023, many are curious about what the Year of the Rabbit will bring and whether it will be a peaceful or challenging year.
Frankie Huang, born in Beijing in January 1987, is often mistaken for a rabbit due to her birth year falling in the Chinese zodiac’s rabbit year.
However, she was actually born before the start of the Lunar New Year and is considered a “secret tiger.”
Huang, a writer and illustrator now based in Massachusetts, has reevaluated her perceptions of bunnies as cute and docile.
In Chinese culture, bunnies are often seen as symbols of selflessness, piety and sacrifice, but Huang has always felt a sense of strength and anger.
This has led her to rethink the stereotypes associated with bunnies.
As she enters her second trimester of pregnancy with a future Year of the Rabbit baby, she is now having a boy.
Frankie Huang, a writer and illustrator based in Massachusetts, has been rethinking her own stereotypes of the calm and docile rabbit.
She points out that the rabbit has become a symbol for the #MeToo movement in China, with the hashtag #RiceBunny being used to avoid censorship.
She also references the idiom “狡兔三窟” (the crafty rabbit has three burrows), which highlights a rabbit’s vigilance and resourcefulness, as well as the last section from “Ballad of Mulan” which questions how one can tell the difference between a male and female rabbit when they run side by side.
The Lunar New Year celebrated across many Asian cultures, marks the start of a new year and the opportunity to leave the past behind and look forward to new possibilities.
The zodiac is used as a guide to predict what the future holds. The Year of the Rabbit in 2023, what can we expect?
The Bunny Museum in Altadena, the world’s largest collection of rabbit-related items, may offer some insight into what the Year of the Rabbit in 2023 might bring.
Co-founder Candace Frazee reports that over half of the museum’s visitors are Asian, many of whom are visiting because they were born in a rabbit year.
2023 also marks the museum’s 25th anniversary, making it a double celebration. According to Frazee, rabbits in nature are hardly meek creatures.
They are prey animals and are always trying to avoid being eaten, they are swift and have the instinct to flee, they throw things around if they don’t like them in their area, and they fight.
Laura Lau, co-author of “The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes,” states that the zodiac rabbit is known for its peaceful, diplomatic, and lucky characteristics.
According to superstition, those born in a particular year take on the traits of that year’s animal.
Those characteristics will also affect each individual year and how various animals experience that year.
Lau describes the rabbit as being about making things nice, noting that it doesn’t mean that the rabbit year doesn’t have drama underneath, but it is about maintaining etiquette, moving forward, and having more productivity.
Each year in the Chinese Zodiac has an element, and 2023 is the Year of the Water Rabbit.
According to Lau, the element of water makes the animal more meditative, emotional, and empathetic.
The water element tones down the fierceness of the Tiger, while this year, the water makes the rabbit more introspective and sensitive.
This may be a relief to those who have felt the effects of the Year of the Tiger, known for bringing a lot of passion and change but also unpredictability and explosiveness.
Desmond Chiam, an actor best known for his role as the super-soldier Dovich in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and is also a rabbit, aspires to be gentle.
He grew up in Australia, and his Singaporean parents always pointed out how gentle and quiet he was as a child.
His parents take pride in the fact that, in their family, they try to have as many rabbits as possible to maintain peace. He has a few other cousins and aunts who are also rabbits. Chiam says, “Rabbits have taken over”, and his family is relatively peaceful.
OiYan Poon, a race and education researcher who is writing a forthcoming book, a collection of letters to her 7-year-old daughter about being Asian in America, always took pride in being a rabbit.
As a child, she would read her horoscope on Chinese restaurant placemats and think, “Yes, I am quick-witted. Yes, I am a natural-born leader.”
Poon sees the zodiac as a “fun thing” but admits that sometimes it can be true. For example, animals opposite each other on the zodiac wheel, such as rabbits and roosters, are not supposed to get along.
Poon and her younger brother, a rooster, did not get along growing up. Lau explains that roosters are supposed to be inflexible, Poon’s brother being inflexible, and therefore will have a harder time this rabbit year, along with impulsive tigers and horses.
Animals that will be able to adjust more easily to the rabbit’s more diplomatic, less direct communication style are the sheep, the dog, and the boar.
Interestingly, 2023 also marks an uncommon year where the Chinese and Vietnamese zodiac animals differ. In the Vietnamese zodiac, the Year of the Rabbit, which is fourth in the zodiac cycle, is replaced by the Year of the Cat.
How can there be two different animals this year?
The reason for this difference lies in the origin story of the Chinese zodiac. According to legend, the Jade Emperor organized a race where animals competed to be part of the top 12, and the order of the zodiac was determined by the winners of the race.
The reason for the difference in animals between the Chinese and Vietnamese zodiacs is due to the variations in folklore as it travels.
Charles Liu, the co-founder of Irvine’s A Little Dynasty Chinese School, says that even now, the school’s teachers still teach Lunar New Year stories, but the details of them depend on who’s teaching them.
Lau explains that some Chinese zodiac experts, including her late mother, see the cat as represented in the Tiger year.
However, in one popular Chinese rendition of the story, the rat and the cat were best friends who planned to compete together, but on the morning of the race, the rat sneaks off without the cat.
The rat wins, while the cat oversleeps and misses the whole race. This betrayal explains why the cat is not in the zodiac and why cats hate mice.
Quyen Di Chuc Bui, a Vietnamese language lecturer at UCLA, suggests that there are multiple explanations for why the Vietnamese zodiac has a cat.
Many believe it may have evolved from confusion in pronunciation because the word for rabbit in Old Chinese is pronounced “mao,” similar to the sound “mèo” in Vietnamese.
Chuc Bui also notes that it is because ancient Vietnamese people who originally lived in the lowlands preferred a more domestic animal like the cat over a wild animal like the rabbit.
Emmerick Doan, one of the organizers of the UVSA Tet Festival, which takes place from Jan. 27 to Jan. 29 at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, said there’s another theory that Vietnamese farmers often dealt with rats invading their crops, so they developed a special affinity for the cats that would kill the rats.
For the purposes of astrology, rabbits and cats share similar characteristics.
“From what I know, cats are really ambitious,” said Doan. “They’re really agile, and there’s a duality to them, where they’re sensitive, but there’s also a lot of tenacity.”
Lau, the author of “The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes,” states that rabbits know how to enjoy life and enjoying life is definitely something that cats also like to do, according to Mye Hoang, the director of “Cat Daddies,” a documentary that follows nine men whose lives have been forever changed by their love of cats.
Her older sister Dian Hoang always says that if she were reincarnated, she’d want to come back as one of Mye’s cats.
Dian Hoang, who lived in Saigon until she was a teenager, always helped their late father pack the new year’s red envelopes.
This year, she went to four different banks to gather crisp bills to fill 18 envelopes with one $5 bill, a $2 bill, and two $1 bills.
The number 9, in addition to symbolizing a cat’s nine lives, is considered a lucky number in Vietnamese culture, according to Dian Hoang.
On Jan. 22, Mye will be screening her film “Cat Daddies” in Tucson, Arizona, which is coincidentally the hometown of her husband, Dave Boyle, who partly inspired the film. She plans to hand out lucky cat envelopes to those who ask questions during the Q&A.
Will 2023 bring a year of peace?
Many people are familiar with the Jade Rabbit, but there is a lesser-known Rabbit God called the 兔兒神, which the poet Chen Chen uses as his Twitter display name.
Chen says that most people who can’t read Chinese probably assume it’s his actual name. But the Rabbit God holds special meaning for him.
Chen first learned about the patron god of queer love from a short film by Andrew Thomas Huang, “Kiss of the Rabbit God.”
It surprised him that this deity was from Fujian, his home province. There’s a shrine in Taiwan dedicated to the Rabbit God, and queer Chinese couples make pilgrimages there to receive blessings, he said.
This knowledge gave some peace to a young man trying to reconcile his Chinese-American and queer identities. He’s writing about this in his debut book of essays, “In Cahoots With the Rabbit God,” which is scheduled for release in 2023.
Victor Narro, the project director for the UCLA Labor Center, born in 1963, relates to both his cat and rabbit zodiac signs. He teaches a popular spirituality, mindfulness, and self-compassion class that focuses on healing.
“Activists and social justice workers are constantly burning out emotionally, physically, and mentally, and then you struggle with finding a sense of purpose,” he said. He wanted to create a space to talk about how to deal with anger, have courageous conversations and be kind.
He thinks we especially need some peace coming out of a chaotic year. In Vietnamese culture, cats are also thought to bring luck and peace of mind, said Chuc Bui.
Though he doesn’t believe in the zodiac superstitions, he said many in the Vietnamese community take them very seriously.
Tra-my Le, from Garden Grove, is nervous about 2023. She says that rabbits born in the summer of 1975 face more challenges in relationships than those born in the spring or fall of that year. She’s still recovering from two divorces.
But through the Vietnamese psychic readers, she follows on YouTube, she’s learned it’s most important for her to focus on her health this year.
Soo-won Lee, a rabbit based in Rancho Palos Verdes, said her Korean mother always told her she holds excessive fire, according to her astrology chart.
She was told to be careful with her health, otherwise, she’d have a heart attack by 50. She also was told that if she and her first husband stayed together, he would die before her. The marriage lasted only a couple of years.
The Chinese zodiac can be quite blunt, said Chiam. “I remember reading some of the horoscopes in my aunt’s apartment, and some of them are like, ‘Your year is gonna be filled with death.’ There are no mitigating factors. Just get ready for a bad year,” he said.
It can be hard not to believe when you see other predictions come true, Lee admits. But now, when she hears astrological advice, she tries to take the good stuff and let the bad stuff go.
Ultimately, the Chinese zodiac is just one way to understand the world and ourselves.
The characteristics of each animal are not set in stone and can vary depending on an individual’s experiences and perspectives.
It’s important to remember that the zodiac is just one aspect of understanding one’s self and the world, and it’s not the only definitive way. It’s a way to have fun, find some inspiration or find a community, but shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Many people assume Frankie Huang to be a rabbit, but she was born in January 1987, just before the start of the Lunar New Year, making her a “secret tiger.”
Huang, a writer and illustrator, has always felt like a rabbit symbolizes being underestimated, particularly as an Asian woman, but she is rethinking her own stereotypes of the calm and docile rabbit as she enters her second trimester of pregnancy with a future Year of the Rabbit baby.
The zodiac animal of the year is seen as a compass for the future, and the rabbit is known for peace, diplomacy and luck.
2023 is also an uncommon year where the Chinese and Vietnamese zodiac animals differ, with the Rabbit being replaced by the Cat in Vietnamese culture.
There are many theories about why this is, but the zodiac is seen as a fun way of thinking about life, symbols, and relationships and can bring peace and understanding.
The Year of the Rabbit in 2023 holds a variety of meanings and interpretations for different cultures and individuals.
While some may view the rabbit as a symbol of peace, diplomacy, and luck, others may see it as a symbol of prey, swiftness and instinct to flee.
The zodiac can be seen as a compass for the upcoming year and can provide a fun way of thinking about life, symbols and relationships.
Whether you believe in the zodiac or not, it is important to remember that the year is personal and subjective, and how we interpret it is up to us.
