Happy (Chinese) New Year!!

The folk story behind the Year of the Rabbit (China) and Year of the Cat (Vietnam)

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2011 is the Year of the Golden Rabbit, and begins on February 3, 2011 and ends on January 22, 2012.
At the same time, with just one hour time difference due to location, the Vietnamese will be welcoming their lunar New Year, or Tet, the Year of the Cat.

To make it easier for the people to follow the calendar, a folk story from China describes how animals were selected to the cycle of years.

A long time ago, the Lord Buddha summoned all the animals together to assign each of them a year. At that time, the cat and the rat were best friends. When the cat heard the news, he told the rat about it, and both animals decided to go to the summoning together. However, since the rat did not wake the cat, the cat continued to nap and did not make it to the assembly on time and therefore was never assigned a year. This is why there is no year of the cat and this is why cats hate rats now.

But the rat was determined to get to the assembly and he used a trick. He knew that a small animal like him would not be able to compete with the bigger animals, so he persuaded the ox to let him ride on its head. The ox consented and just before they arrived, the rat jumped off the ox’s head and raced through the finish line first. Being first, the rat received the first year in the lunar cycle.

This is why the year of the rat is the first year in the cycle and the year of the ox is the second.

Vietnam also adapted the 12 animal zodiac from China, but they have Cat in it, while Rabbit is dropped off. Nobody knows for sure why this is. One explanation is that the pronunciation of “Rabbit” in Chinese sounds like “Cat” in Vietnamese, so it is believed that a mistake was made.