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How to find out your Chinese star sign

Picture: YouTube/TED talks
Picture: YouTube/TED talks

If you tell someone your Chinese zodiac sign, you're actually revealing quite a lot about yourself.

Given that Chinese new years rotate between 12 animal signs, you're giving someone, depending on their knowledge, your rough age (unless you look 12 years younger or older than you are).

Unlike the western zodiac, which divides the year into twelve signs associated with constellations, the Chinese cycle is yearly and has no association to star signs.

Traditionally, the Chinese believed that certain animal signs got on better with others and that some were luckier than others.

For example, dragons are a sign of power and prosperity, meaning some parents aimed to conceive for a dragon child in 2012, when the birth rate rose by roughly five per cent.

This year is currently the year of the monkey, which means if your age is a multiple of 12, it's your year.

To find your zodiac sign, see the timeline, below:

ShaoLan Hseuh, a technologist and entrepreneur, recently gave a TED talk about the Chinese Zodiac, which detailed how some of the superstitions surrounding the signs have carried through to the modern day.

Many Chinese people make their investment decisions based on the zodiac sign index. Although the belief and tradition of the zodiac sign has been over thousands of years, the trend of using it in making major decisions did not really happen until the past few decades.

I went through the Forbes top 300 richest people in the world, and it's interesting to see the most undesirable two animals, the goat and tiger, are at the top of the chart, even higher than the dragon.

So maybe we should consider, maybe it's much better to have less competition.

Watch the full video, below:

More: Here is how people spend their money during Chinese New Year

More: Chinese New Year in numbers

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