Talk:Rat (zodiac)

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[edit] Countries

The countries are absolutely incorrect. Other than the Netherlands (Snake) and Sweden (Goat), the countries listed are all Horse countries--at least judging by the most commonly used date of the declaration of independence.

It's not about when they declared their independence. It's about associations that the signs have with the countries. If you look up Chinese astrology in Chinese books, you would notice that all the countries are listed under the correct signs. It has more to do with political, cultural and geographical (longitute/latitude, numbers etc) influence, then it does with "independence". Even the Western astrology has countries under each sign. For example, England is Aries and Leo is Italy (this does mean that England was "born" in March/April or Italy was "born" in July/August - it has to do with politics, geography and culture. TheGoodson 14:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

So, why does an astrologer's fallibe interpretation of something as inherently subjective as "national character" (or as you put it "associations the signs have with the countries") count for more than the respective countries's own claims to beginning of statehood--especially in an age of federations? I admit, I'm unsure as to which weighs most in each case, decleration of independence, recognition of independence, adoption of constitution, discovery, founding, etc., which is what I asked for clarification about. Also, feel free to explain how latitudes and longitudes are characterized by a certain sign.

Okay, I'll try to clarify as best as I could. Nations don't have a definitive "birth year" - what is the birth year of any nation anyway? For example, Germany was first unified on January 18, 1871, than came the Weimar Republic, than Nazi Germany and than Unified Republic of Germany - oh I forgot to mention the Holy Roman Empire - so when was Germany really "born"? When was it first discovered? Nobody knows these things. Astrology is what it is. I personally don't care what countries fall under what sign, but whoever posted the info, posted it correctly because I have previously read the same thing. To be honest, I cannot explain how latitudes and longitudes fall into all this, I am only stating what I have picked up on in my reading on the subject. There is a little bit of astronomy to it. As I have mentioned, the list of countries is bigger for each sign, but only a few countries are listed for each. There is also a "main" or "primary" nation under each sign. I believe Germany is Rat, Russia is primary for Tiger, China for Dragon, India for Ox and so on and so forth. TheGoodson 15:44, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I had asked what dates should be used, since hardly any of them fell in years of the respective signs (and most countries offer more than one), and I was unaware of the geographical factor.

I went ahead and mapped the respective countries. I still have trouble seeing any sort of geographical corelation other than Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands for the Rat and Australia and New Zealand for the Rabbit. China and Japan for the Dragon has something to it, though Taiwan and the Koreas are in the way. You can find the map here: http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a104/skybridge/map.jpg

Great map, did you make that yourself? We can post it when it is complete and accurate on the main Chinese Astrology article. We also need a legend and it seems like the Horse countries are also black, just like the Rat countries. The horse countries should be changed to another color. Like I've mentioned already, it's not just geographical, but political and cultural influence. Those two factors are very important. Each country as sort of a "national personality" and this falls into the equation also. We will help each ohter do this and complete the map. Perhaps, we can even make things a little better by adding legends and tales behind each sign. It should be great. TheGoodson 1:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

There are also cities that are linked to the signs (should we include these, or will it be too much?). There are many, many little things that are associated with each sign...I was wondering if t's a good idea to list some of these things. Some things include cities (like I mentioned), also animals. Like we know the signs are already animals (eg. rat, tiger, snake etc etc), but there are other animals that are associated with the signs; called "secondary animals". LOL, chinese astrology is more complicated then what most people think. I'm glad I have two Chinese grandparents who have been following chinese astrology for generations. TheGoodson 1:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I still find the "political and cultural influence" associated with a sign very subjective (and tempted to disagree with plenty of them on that basis), but if it's established Chinese tradition, I guess it's alright. Yes, I made the map myself, the colors are based on a different book of mine. The Rat was supposed to be dark red and the Horse black. It shows up on my screen pretty well. The only one I had a little trouble with was the shade of grey. Anyway, feel free to use it, add to it, if you like it.

It's great, but it doesn't look complete. For example, Colombia and Brazil for the rat have not been colored. I'm am not sure of the rest, but can you make sure they are all complete before we can use it on the article? Also, is it possible to use a shade of red or some other color that will not be looking so black. People will confuse the rat and horse countries. Also, add a legend - like somewhere on the map put all the colors and their corresponding sign. So people will know what the colored countries mean and stand for. Thanks a bunch. TheGoodson 10:49, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I don't know how to work with the map. Like how do you add colors and what program do you use? Also, don't worry about the "subjective" things. This is astrology - it's all subjective and for fun and tradition. "Cultural and Political" influence is actually more like "national personality" that are like their corresponding signs. Each nation has a sort of "personality" that goes well with a particular sign. Plus, when the geological part is added to it, it makes even more sense. I'm also going to go ahead and change one of the nations for the Tiger - I'm going to take out Tibet and replace it with Turkey, which is another Tiger nation. I am making this change because Turkey is more dominant and Tibet is really just a region that won't show on the map. So teach me about the map, please. How to use it and add colors and a legend and such. Thanks. TheGoodson 11:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, you can find the changes you requested at http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a104/skybridge/map-1.jpg I may say I still don't agree with it, though. As to your earlier question whether or not we should list cities, etc--YES. List as much as possible! We don't have to map everything.

[edit] Assigning signs to countries an established Chinese tradition?

I'm probably just an ignorant modern day Chinese. But I don't understand how well-established it could be. It certainly wasn't something most people sit around and discuss when talking about the relative "evils" or "merits" of other countries. And, 200 years ago, China didn't consider any other country important. (Yes its arrogant. But that's how it was.) My point is - what kind of "tradition" is that? tess 21:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Celebrities?

I wonder why there's so many autorcrats and Nazis on the Celebrity Rats list?

Smells a bit of some sort of agenda?

I've boldy removed the list of celebrities--I think it's unencyclopedic and not clearly defined, and it could be a matter of endless debate who should be included. Wmahan . 04:34, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The people are rats, born in the chinese year of the rat. It does not matter whether they were autocrats, nazis or what not. They were rats and it should be noted. All signs have good and bad people born on them...it's just astrology!

The list is ALL people born in the year of the RAT...it should stay. Whether good people or bad people. What "agenda" are you talking about? Please either contribute well or just don't do things that are unfair. Wikipedia is for FACTS (fact is all these people were rats; like it or not), not "agendas". Don't be so paranoid.

Maybe I wasn't clear; I wasn't endorsing the view that there was some sort of agenda. Rather, any such list is necessarily unencyclopedic, incomplete, and difficult to maintain. Do you really think it's possible to list all celebrities born in the year of the rat? If we do that for every sign, we'd need to list every celebrity, which is no small undertaking.

Wikipedia is definitely not a repository for any information that happens to be factual. As I noted at Talk:Chinese astrology, I think the lists should be removed from all the Chinese astrology articles. Wmahan . 13:16, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Well we don't have to list ALL the celebrities, but list the most notable ones. It's informative and fun for the readers. Every Chinese Astrology website and book list at least a few celebs for each sign. The people were born in the year of the rat, thus they are rats in Chinese Astrology. All the lists should stay. There is no big deal in it or harm in it. It's, like I said, informative and fun for the readers who are reading their sign. There are good and bad people that fell under each sign. The Rat is a strong sign that has it's fair share of horrendous characaters and also some tremendous characters.

Such lists have a tendency to attract cruft - everyone wants their favorite celeb listed, so the list gets longer and longer. There's also no good way to say "this person shouldn't be listed" because, as you say, it's true that they're a Rat (or whatever) so it's hard to control the cruft. Could we just say "See the corresponding year pages for lists of celebrities born in this year"? DenisMoskowitz 17:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC) (a Rat myself, as it happens)

Yes, I think we could. - Since the discussion somehow came to a standstill, I'll do boldy the edit. 84.72.17.245 04:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

The list of notables is getting way out of hand. Perhaps we cound create categories for the zodiacs, so the notable can be categorized. And the zodiac pages didn't need to keep these lists. I think the western astrology pages are trying to do that. --tess 21:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I vote for making a new article, Celebrities Sign (chinese zodiac) - with a lists of famous persons of all signs (separeted by sign/element), something like the List of games Daniel Leite 04:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Since no one protested and I agree with you, I boldly went ahead and created the Category Category:List_of_Celebrities_(Chinese_Zodiac) and the subcategories for each sign. I'm currently adding the categories to the current Year of the Dog celebrities (I will remove the section afterwards, replacing it with a link).

Now, it would be great if you and all the other regulars (Maestro, VeronicaPR, IrishPearl etc.) would each take a Zodiac Sign and do the same, since it would take ages to do this alone. Teshik 12:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split contested, candidate for deletion

Hrmpf. In the very minute I finally got the Dog article finished, the new categories were put up into the Deletion candidates. Go here for details, and please tell if you want the categories kept, deleted, or if you got another suggestion entirely. I've stopped editing for now. Teshik 14:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Zodiac Killer

The "antichrist" is supposed to be born under a rat year. I am only going by what I learned in mythological studies. It was very brief, but from my understanding, the rat is the worst sign of the zodiac. Devout followers of chinese astrology believe the rat is a sign of wealth, charisma, seduction, manipulation and never peace minded and thus culminating in a seductive, charming, yet destructive individual. It is sometimes called "the zodiac killer". Yukioti

[edit] Chinese Character

I thought the Chinese symbol for 'Year of the Rat' was 子, as apposed to 鼠, which just means 'Rat'. I could be wrong though. Could somebody please verify which is correct. Sadako No Deshi 18:46, 18 July 2006 (BST)

鼠 is the correct term. 子 literally means "son", or "person". It is used as the first of 12 characters for a duodecimal counting system, and in combination with another set of 10 characters, is used to represent the years in a sexagenary cycle of the Chinese calendar. (The combinations were also used for other time-related intervals.) 子 (first) years are always 鼠 (rat) years. That is probably what caused the confusion. --tess 22:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I also want to point out that 子 isn't necessarily the wrong character to use for the year of the Rat. But the other 11 Chinese zodiac pages use the character for the animal, not the character for the number. So I changed this page's symbol to be consistent with the others. --tess 22:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Please revert it back to she3鼠. It is the proper character here. All of the pages are currently incorrect, and I have been changing them bit by bit. Drop by the "chinese astrology" wikipedia discussion page for the proper links. It is a bit embarrassing to be so far off on all of the characters for so long.Lesotho 02:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I've thus far edited this page and Tiger (zodiac). Hope it make more sense this way. tess (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Let's remove all the celebrities lists

I have made this a central location for discussion of all twelve articles; the others link here. The notion behind these lists is unencyclopedic and a great example of what Wikipedia is NOT supposed to be. We can't list every celebrity and famous person; that would be completely unmaintainable. To pick and choose some is to fall prey to arbitrary inclusion criteria which amount to original research. The vast majority of these people do not believe in the Chinese Zodiac, so to connect them to it in any way is highly misleading. And the lists amount to a late 20th century Western bias; they are nothing more than pop-culture references that have no place in a serious article about an ancient Chinese tradition. So, let's remove them completely, and without merging them to yet another article. — coel acan — 18:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely - this is just what I said last June. I'd say leave 24 hours for detractors to pipe up, and then delete them. DenisMoskowitz 18:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. While the lists are marginally interesting to look at, they are impossible to maintain, never keep under the suggested 50 people mark, and even when, the "choosing the right celebs" aspect is just making things worse. Teshik 19:55, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Having a list seems at first glance like it would be a good idea, but maintaining such a list in an encyclopedic fashion is entirely unfeasible. Let's get rid of them. Lesnail 20:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

This amounts to unmaintainable sectioncruft. They must go. (Although, it's not often that someone like Ruhollah Khomeini and a Cheetah Girl rub shoulders.) Caknuck 21:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, the lists should go, for all of the reasons cited above. I will admit that some of them are quite enjoyable. However -- they are unecyclopedic and impossible to properly maintain. Majoreditor 21:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Delete per nom. It's really quite useless. A link to the birth years that correspond to the sign is enough. (After we finish with the lists, I also propose to clean out all the dodgy associations: all the "birth stones" are actually the birth stones of the "corresponding" solar zodiacs. And the "associated countries" are uncited, probably uncitable and very dubious. --Sumple (Talk) 11:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

All right, that's overwhelming support already, and more feedback than one usually gets even from an article RFC. At DenisMoskowitz's suggestion, I'm going to go ahead and be bold and delete them. — coel acan — 00:24, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. My only other suggestion would be to put in an HTML comment saying "don't add a list of celebrities to this article" if you can think of where to put it. DenisMoskowitz 01:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

If the lists appear yet again, I'd put such an html comment right where they appear. Hopefully we won't have to, though, and I'd rather not encourage them if possible. — coel acan — 00:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, very good point. DenisMoskowitz 01:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Glad to see that the problem is solved, some pages was messed up.Daniel Leite 21:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia zodiac? Too many things wrong

I'm not an expert on this topic, so I'd rather not be the editor for this article; but in my opinion, this article looks like an astrology reading instead of an encyclopedic article.

For starters, the first paragraph, which currently reads "The Rat ( 子 ) was welcomed in ancient times as a protector and bringer of material prosperity" should look more like "The Rat sign is one of the twelve signs in the Chinese Zodiac" (The box at the right is not an excuse). And the fact that this same content appears on www.famouschinese.com (a GFDL-licensed page) does not make it true.

Also, what's this thing about countries? where does that come from? There are no serious references whatsoever! A redo of this page from scratch should be in order. I'm tagging this article and watching it until it's either fixed or I'm satisfied with an explanation for this type of content. Oskilian 00:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I put the Not verified tag. I just forgot to write something about it in the edit summary. Oskilian 00:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Season

If the month associated with Rats is December, why is the season associated Winter? If I'm not mistaken, aren't the first three weeks of December Autumn and not Winter...?--Tainted Drifter 11:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Attributes Section: Tiger as a love interest?

The person who submitted the Tiger as a replacement should support such a change with a source of some sort. Because as far as sources that I have come accross - several books, several websites, etc - most agree that the best love/friendships come from Monkeys and Dragons. Oxen, perhaps. But nothing indicates that a Tiger usurps a Dragon in this respect and thus requires revision. I think the last version of this page - the one with Dragon instead of Tiger - was fine as it was. If someone feels it necessary to disagree, feel free to do so. Otherwise, I've it in my designs to change this revision in three days time. Ultatri 13:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. The Rat, Dragon, and Monkey belong to the same trine of the zodiac (1st trine). Rats are best with Monkey's and Dragons first, and then comes the Ox. Tiger and Rat pairings can be quite turbulent - their characters clash. Rats, though charming and sociable, are systematic and disciplined and demand order, obedience, and they can be extremely dictatorial - this would not sit well with another strong personality like the tiger, who tend to be quarellsome, defiant, spontaneous, and unruly - this kind of defiance would drive a Rat native up the wall. User:VeronicaPR —Preceding unsigned comment added by VeronicaPR (talk • contribs) 06:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links - Revamped

I've just went over the External Links section a bit and reorganized them into alpha-ascending order. But as I've visited some of the sites, I've noticed that they contain a good degree of ... how do I put it ... useless information and a lot of advertisments. Especially the chinesezodiac.info link - it does not add anything of value that the other links don't have. I suggest that these links be given a good once over by others to see if they deserve to remain in this article. I'm inclined to believe that some of these links amount to no more than crud - means of attracting visitors with seemingly useful stuff - rather than actually contributing something of value. But that's just me...Ultatri 05:38, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Year of the Rat" vs. "Year of the Mouse"

I don't necessarily advocate going around changing everything from one to the other. But its un-encyclopedic to not even mention that in Chinese, it can be translated to either animal. And in fact, in some parts of the world it is much more commonly called the Year of the Mouse - such as these sites Time magazine article about 1948, and Year of the Mouse Celebration at Hong Kong Disneyland. --tessc (talk) 23:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)