The exact dates of the 2019 lunar year
The Earth Pig year ran from February 5, 2019 to January 24, 2020. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2019, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2019 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2018 one, February 5, 2019 against February 16, 2018. Why the 2019 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Earth Pig pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2019 is Ji and the branch is the Pig, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2019 that branch is taken to mean someone generous and unguarded, taking people at their word for longer than is wise. Earth, the element attached to 2019, adds steadiness, patience and an attachment to what is already built.
2019 is a yin year, the inward half of the Earth pair: 2018 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2019 is described as the pig temperament working through steadiness.
Born in January or early February 2019
From 1 January 2019 to February 4, 2019 the animal in force was still the Dog, not the Pig — 35 days of 2019 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2019 is a Dog.
The first Pig of 2019 is anyone born on February 5, 2019 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 24, 2020. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 5, 2019 is at the later end.
Where 2019 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2019 is position 36 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Ji stem against the Pig branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Earth Pig year was 1959 and the next is 2079.
Someone born in 1959 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2019, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2019 meets the pairing again in 2079.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Pig of 2019 is grouped with the Rabbit and the Goat, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2015 and 2023. Its opposition is the Snake, six years on from 2019 in 2025.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2019 was measured to produce them; 2019 stands four years from 2015 and six from 2025, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2019
Because the 2019 lunar year opened on February 5, 2019, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 24, 2020, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2019 stays the Pig.
Handbooks equate the Pig of 2019 with Scorpio, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2019 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2019 Earth Pig as a year-long version of Scorpio flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2019 Chinese new year start?
February 5, 2019, and the year ran on to January 24, 2020 — 354 days.
What animal is 2019?
The Pig, in its Earth form, from February 5, 2019 onward; a birth earlier in 2019 is a Dog.
Was 2019 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2019 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2019 — which animal am I?
The Dog, unless you were born on February 5, 2019 or later, which is when the 2019 year began.