The exact dates of the 2016 lunar year
The Fire Monkey year ran from February 8, 2016 to January 27, 2017. Twelve lunar months came to 355 days in 2016, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2016 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2015 one, February 8, 2016 against February 19, 2015. Why the 2016 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Fire Monkey pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2016 is Bing and the branch is the Monkey, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2016 that branch is taken to mean someone inventive and quick, solving things sideways and getting bored fast. Fire, the element attached to 2016, adds visibility, warmth and a tendency to burn through reserves.
2016 is a yang year, the outward half of the Fire pair: 2017 carries the same element in its yin form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2016 is described as the monkey temperament working through visibility.
Born in January or early February 2016
From 1 January 2016 to February 7, 2016 the animal in force was still the Goat, not the Monkey — 38 days of 2016 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2016 is a Goat.
The first Monkey of 2016 is anyone born on February 8, 2016 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 27, 2017. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 8, 2016 is at the later end.
Where 2016 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2016 is position 33 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Bing stem against the Monkey branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Fire Monkey year was 1956 and the next is 2076.
Someone born in 1956 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2016, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2016 meets the pairing again in 2076.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Monkey of 2016 is grouped with the Rat and the Dragon, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2012 and 2020. Its opposition is the Tiger, six years on from 2016 in 2022.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2016 was measured to produce them; 2016 stands four years from 2012 and six from 2022, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2016
Because the 2016 lunar year opened on February 8, 2016, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 27, 2017, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2016 stays the Monkey.
Handbooks equate the Monkey of 2016 with Leo, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2016 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2016 Fire Monkey as a year-long version of Leo flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2016 Chinese new year start?
February 8, 2016, and the year ran on to January 27, 2017 — 355 days.
What animal is 2016?
The Monkey, in its Fire form, from February 8, 2016 onward; a birth earlier in 2016 is a Goat.
Was 2016 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2016 ran twelve months and 355 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2016 — which animal am I?
The Goat, unless you were born on February 8, 2016 or later, which is when the 2016 year began.