Okay, so I was messing around with some old dates and stuff, and I got this idea to figure out the Chinese zodiac sign for the year 1879. It’s kinda random, I know, but I thought it would be a fun little project.
First, I grabbed a piece of paper and tried to remember how the whole Chinese zodiac thing works. I knew it was a 12-year cycle, with each year represented by an animal. I also remembered that there’s this whole element thing (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) that goes along with it, but I decided to keep it simple and just focus on the animal for now.
Figuring Out the Cycle
So, I needed a starting point. I thought, “Okay, I know my own zodiac sign and birth year, let’s work backward from there.” But then I realized that’s way too much counting! I needed something closer to 1879.
I looked up a few recent years and their corresponding zodiac signs. This helped me get a better sense of where 1879 might fall in the cycle.
The Calculation (Sort Of)
I did some rough calculations. It involved a lot of subtracting and dividing by *, it felt like a bit of a mess, and my paper was covered in scribbled numbers.
Basically, every 12 years the cycle repeats so the animal will be the same, So I find a near year which is 1975 is a Rabbit year, 1975-1879=96, 96/12=8. Look! 96 is exactly an integer multiple of 12! That means 1879 is same as 1975.
The Result!
After all that number-crunching , I figured out that 1879 was the year of the Rabbit. The element that matches it will need further study, I don’t want to talk about it now.
It’s a simple result, and there’s probably an easier way to do this with online calculators, but hey, I enjoyed the process of figuring it out myself. Plus, now I have a slightly better understanding of how the Chinese zodiac cycle works!
