The Chinese zodiac, one of the many cultural exports from China since antiquity—Taoism, Maoism, and of course, TikTok, just to list a few—is perhaps less eye-catching, but nonetheless, it is still quite fascinating.

In ancient China, the calendar was very different from that used today. For the month, there was what's called the Chinese lunar calendar, still in use today in China. But for the year, they had two principal ways: one was to name the year as "Year of the X Emperor," the other was to use the tiangan dizhi(Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches) system. And here's where the zodiacs come in. The calendar consists of twelve words which correspond to the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. The tiangan dizhi system consists of ten words, and the combination of these two sets of words creates a 120-year cycle, which is more than enough to record the year for general purposes.

The twelve zodiacs are, in order, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep (Goat), Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. There are some children's tales about how that came about, of which the most famous is the one about the mouse.