The exact dates of the 2043 lunar year
The Water Pig year ran from February 10, 2043 to January 29, 2044. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2043, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2043 new year fell 19 days later in the Gregorian year than the 2042 one, February 10, 2043 against January 22, 2042. Why the 2043 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Water Pig pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2043 is Gui and the branch is the Pig, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2043 that branch is taken to mean someone generous and unguarded, taking people at their word for longer than is wise. Water, the element attached to 2043, adds adaptability, depth and a way of getting around obstacles rather than through.
2043 is a yin year, the inward half of the Water pair: 2042 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2043 is described as the pig temperament working through adaptability.
Born in January or early February 2043
From 1 January 2043 to February 9, 2043 the animal in force was still the Dog, not the Pig — 40 days of 2043 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2043 is a Dog.
The first Pig of 2043 is anyone born on February 10, 2043 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 29, 2044. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 10, 2043 is at the later end.
Where 2043 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2043 is position 60 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Gui stem against the Pig branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Water Pig year was 1983 and the next is 2103.
Someone born in 1983 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2043, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2043 meets the pairing again in 2103.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Pig of 2043 is grouped with the Rabbit and the Goat, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2039 and 2047. Its opposition is the Snake, six years on from 2043 in 2049.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2043 was measured to produce them; 2043 stands four years from 2039 and six from 2049, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2043
Because the 2043 lunar year opened on February 10, 2043, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 29, 2044, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2043 stays the Pig.
Handbooks equate the Pig of 2043 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 2043 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2043 Water Pig as a year-long version of Scorpio flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2043 Chinese new year start?
February 10, 2043, and the year ran on to January 29, 2044 — 354 days.
What animal is 2043?
The Pig, in its Water form, from February 10, 2043 onward; a birth earlier in 2043 is a Dog.
Was 2043 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2043 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2043 — which animal am I?
The Dog, unless you were born on February 10, 2043 or later, which is when the 2043 year began.