The exact dates of the 2000 lunar year
The Metal Dragon year ran from February 5, 2000 to January 23, 2001. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2000, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2000 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 1999 one, February 5, 2000 against February 16, 1999. Why the 2000 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Metal Dragon pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2000 is Geng and the branch is the Dragon, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2000 that branch is taken to mean someone conspicuous and self-assured, uncomfortable with any small role. Metal, the element attached to 2000, adds definition, resolve and a preference for clean edges.
2000 is a yang year, the outward half of the Metal pair: 2001 carries the same element in its yin form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2000 is described as the dragon temperament working through definition.
Born in January or early February 2000
From 1 January 2000 to February 4, 2000 the animal in force was still the Rabbit, not the Dragon — 35 days of 2000 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2000 is a Rabbit.
The first Dragon of 2000 is anyone born on February 5, 2000 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 23, 2001. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 5, 2000 is at the later end.
Where 2000 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2000 is position 17 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Geng stem against the Dragon branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Metal Dragon year was 1940 and the next is 2060.
Someone born in 1940 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2000, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2000 meets the pairing again in 2060.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Dragon of 2000 is grouped with the Rat and the Monkey, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 1996 and 2004. Its opposition is the Dog, six years on from 2000 in 2006.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2000 was measured to produce them; 2000 stands four years from 1996 and six from 2006, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2000
Because the 2000 lunar year opened on February 5, 2000, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 23, 2001, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2000 stays the Dragon.
Handbooks equate the Dragon of 2000 with Aries, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2000 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2000 Metal Dragon as a year-long version of Aries flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2000 Chinese new year start?
February 5, 2000, and the year ran on to January 23, 2001 — 354 days.
What animal is 2000?
The Dragon, in its Metal form, from February 5, 2000 onward; a birth earlier in 2000 is a Rabbit.
Was 2000 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2000 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2000 — which animal am I?
The Rabbit, unless you were born on February 5, 2000 or later, which is when the 2000 year began.