The exact dates of the 2020 lunar year
The Metal Rat year ran from January 25, 2020 to February 11, 2021. Those 384 days are longer than a Gregorian year because a leap fourth month was inserted: 2020 carried thirteen lunar months rather than twelve, the same month number falling twice.
The 2020 new year fell 11 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2019 one, January 25, 2020 against February 5, 2019. Why the 2020 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Metal Rat pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2020 is Geng and the branch is the Rat, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2020 that branch is taken to mean someone resourceful and quick to spot an opening, with a strong instinct for what is scarce. Metal, the element attached to 2020, adds definition, resolve and a preference for clean edges.
2020 is a yang year, the outward half of the Metal pair: 2021 carries the same element in its yin form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2020 is described as the rat temperament working through definition.
Born in January or early February 2020
From 1 January 2020 to January 24, 2020 the animal in force was still the Pig, not the Rat — 24 days of 2020 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2020 is a Pig.
The first Rat of 2020 is anyone born on January 25, 2020 or later, and the last one anyone born on February 11, 2021. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, January 25, 2020 is at the early end.
Where 2020 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2020 is position 37 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Geng stem against the Rat branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Metal Rat year was 1960 and the next is 2080.
Someone born in 1960 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2020, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2020 meets the pairing again in 2080.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Rat of 2020 is grouped with the Dragon and the Monkey, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2016 and 2024. Its opposition is the Horse, six years on from 2020 in 2026.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2020 was measured to produce them; 2020 stands four years from 2016 and six from 2026, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2020
Because the 2020 lunar year opened on January 25, 2020, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, February 11, 2021, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2020 stays the Rat.
Handbooks equate the Rat of 2020 with Sagittarius, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2020 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2020 Metal Rat as a year-long version of Sagittarius flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2020 Chinese new year start?
January 25, 2020, and the year ran on to February 11, 2021 — 384 days.
What animal is 2020?
The Rat, in its Metal form, from January 25, 2020 onward; a birth earlier in 2020 is a Pig.
Was 2020 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
Yes — a leap fourth month made 2020 thirteen months and 384 days long.
I was born in January 2020 — which animal am I?
The Pig, unless you were born on January 25, 2020 or later, which is when the 2020 year began.