Requirement: know the year your're born...
Chinese Zodiac have 12 signs as listed below. Each sign represent a year and it cycle again after 12 years. Also they have a list of elements. There are 5 elements. Each element have two consecutive years. The two together cycle complete every 60 years. You can get even deeper with minute, hour, day sign. However, I won't get into that. It is too much.
| List of Twelve Animals: | |||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Rat | Ox | Tiger | Rabbit | Dragon | Snake | Horse | Goat | Monkey | Rooster | Dog | Pig |
| List of Elements: | |||||||||||
| 1.) Metal | 2.) Water | 3.) Wood | 4.) Fire | 5.) Earth | |||||||
| List of Months: | |||||||||||
| 1) January | 2) February | 3) March | 4) April | 5) May | 6) June | ||||||
| 7) July | 8) August | 9) September | 10) October | 11) November | 12) December | ||||||
Most of the Chinese New Year have 354 day. Every two to three year it add one month (30 day) to the catch up. Chinese calendar base on full moon. Each full moon is a complete month (usually six 29 day and six 30 day, which mean 29 and 1/2 days). Usually each year have 6 times of 29 days and 6 times of 30 days. However, there are time that there are 7 and 5, in any of the two case. Also the each full moon are inconsistent. Sometime you can have four consecutive times of 29 days full moon. Each year can have 352 to 356 day.
Don't bother to find the pattern because there're NO SIMPLE pattern. You use some Chinese insturment to measure it. The closet that you will ever get to is this. If you want to know the approximation of next year Chinese New Year, here is how you do it: