The Chinese New Year is almost here now. Chinese allover the world are celebrating it just as it was started thousands years ago.

The coming year, according to the Chinese zoology, is the year of “OX”.  Besides the animal sign of “OX”, many people probably don’t know the year is also “numbered”, based on ancient Chinese numeric system, as “Ji-Cou“.  Year of “Ji-Cou” is the 27th year in a 60-year cycle and is the third of the five “OX”  years in each cycle. In another word, everyone will have five times, only five times, to meet the year that bares the same animal symbol and number as the year he was born when he reaches his 60 years old.  I guess the number 60 per cycle was not chosen casually. For thousands of years, 60 year would cover the longest life-expectancy of individuals. However, with rapid advance in modern medicine and improved living conditions, 60 is no longer the end of one’s life but could well be the beginning of another cycle of 60 years!

The Chinese character for year of “OX” (not the character for OX itself) “Cou” means “ugly”. People often wonder by we use that for oxen, considering how much we had loved them and admired their personality for thousands of years. In fact, that is simply a case of ”lost in translation” between ancient and modern Chinese. The character that means “ugly” today is the second in the set of 12 characters that were probably first used to name the 12 month in a year and 12 hours in a day. In that context, it actually means the “warm air has not falling onto earth yet” and is a good sign for “beginning of recovery from the cold”.  Oxen got this Character is probably purely by accidence since it happens to be the second animal in the set of 12 animals.   

When the 12 animal system was introduced to the English world,  the animal was translated to “OX” (or oxen). That has been the “standard” translation for a long time. However, this year, someone has proposed to change it to “Bull”.  Is it simply an dispute in translation? Certainly not.

Oxen are cattle trained as working animals and are unfortunately often castrated males. They are trained for plowing, transporting and other tough jobs.  Because of that, oxen are often given the characters as hard working, obedient, enduring and giving.  Chinese for many years have been very proud of ourselves partly because we also have the “spirit of Ox”. Such spirit had help generations of Chinese, domestic or oversea, to go through many tough times and had kept them productive and to some extent helped them to become rich and powerful.

But that does not seem enough for the new generations of Chinese any more. They start to set their eyes on another type of cattle with almost the opposite characteristics: the Bull!

Bulls are also adult cattle (also used for other large animals) but they are often trained to fight! It may have certain characteristics as oxen, such as strength, power, endurance, but they are not likely obedience or inceptive. On the contrary, they are aggressive. They will not take any challenge lightly and will charge an offence to the challenger when there is a chance. Therefore, it is not surprising that ”Bull” becomes the name of an economy at expansion or a stock market on the raise.

Do we need more explanation for why people perfer “Bull” than “Ox” for the coming year of 2009?