The exact dates of the 2011 lunar year
The Metal Rabbit year ran from February 3, 2011 to January 22, 2012. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2011, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2011 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2010 one, February 3, 2011 against February 14, 2010. Why the 2011 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Metal Rabbit pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2011 is Xin and the branch is the Rabbit, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2011 that branch is taken to mean someone careful and diplomatic, avoiding conflict without conceding the point. Metal, the element attached to 2011, adds definition, resolve and a preference for clean edges.
2011 is a yin year, the inward half of the Metal pair: 2010 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2011 is described as the rabbit temperament working through definition.
Born in January or early February 2011
From 1 January 2011 to February 2, 2011 the animal in force was still the Tiger, not the Rabbit — 33 days of 2011 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2011 is a Tiger.
The first Rabbit of 2011 is anyone born on February 3, 2011 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 22, 2012. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 3, 2011 is at the later end.
Where 2011 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2011 is position 28 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Xin stem against the Rabbit branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Metal Rabbit year was 1951 and the next is 2071.
Someone born in 1951 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2011, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2011 meets the pairing again in 2071.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Rabbit of 2011 is grouped with the Goat and the Pig, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2007 and 2015. Its opposition is the Rooster, six years on from 2011 in 2017.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2011 was measured to produce them; 2011 stands four years from 2007 and six from 2017, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2011
Because the 2011 lunar year opened on February 3, 2011, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 22, 2012, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2011 stays the Rabbit.
Handbooks equate the Rabbit of 2011 with Pisces, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2011 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2011 Metal Rabbit as a year-long version of Pisces flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2011 Chinese new year start?
February 3, 2011, and the year ran on to January 22, 2012 — 354 days.
What animal is 2011?
The Rabbit, in its Metal form, from February 3, 2011 onward; a birth earlier in 2011 is a Tiger.
Was 2011 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2011 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2011 — which animal am I?
The Tiger, unless you were born on February 3, 2011 or later, which is when the 2011 year began.