The exact dates of the 2017 lunar year
The Fire Rooster year ran from January 28, 2017 to February 15, 2018. Those 384 days are longer than a Gregorian year because a leap sixth month was inserted: 2017 carried thirteen lunar months rather than twelve, the same month number falling twice.
The 2017 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2016 one, January 28, 2017 against February 8, 2016. Why the 2017 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Fire Rooster pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2017 is Ding and the branch is the Rooster, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2017 that branch is taken to mean someone exact and outspoken, noticing detail and reporting it. Fire, the element attached to 2017, adds visibility, warmth and a tendency to burn through reserves.
2017 is a yin year, the inward half of the Fire pair: 2016 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2017 is described as the rooster temperament working through visibility.
Born in January or early February 2017
From 1 January 2017 to January 27, 2017 the animal in force was still the Monkey, not the Rooster — 27 days of 2017 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2017 is a Monkey.
The first Rooster of 2017 is anyone born on January 28, 2017 or later, and the last one anyone born on February 15, 2018. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, January 28, 2017 is at the early end.
Where 2017 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2017 is position 34 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Ding stem against the Rooster branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Fire Rooster year was 1957 and the next is 2077.
Someone born in 1957 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2017, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2017 meets the pairing again in 2077.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Rooster of 2017 is grouped with the Ox and the Snake, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2013 and 2021. Its opposition is the Rabbit, six years on from 2017 in 2023.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2017 was measured to produce them; 2017 stands four years from 2013 and six from 2023, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2017
Because the 2017 lunar year opened on January 28, 2017, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, February 15, 2018, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2017 stays the Rooster.
Handbooks equate the Rooster of 2017 with Virgo, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2017 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2017 Fire Rooster as a year-long version of Virgo flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2017 Chinese new year start?
January 28, 2017, and the year ran on to February 15, 2018 — 384 days.
What animal is 2017?
The Rooster, in its Fire form, from January 28, 2017 onward; a birth earlier in 2017 is a Monkey.
Was 2017 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
Yes — a leap sixth month made 2017 thirteen months and 384 days long.
I was born in January 2017 — which animal am I?
The Monkey, unless you were born on January 28, 2017 or later, which is when the 2017 year began.