Crouching tigers hidden dragons: on the myth of the two birth signs

ABSTRACT

Sensational reports on the number of newborn in the years of tiger and dragon have aroused great concerns among certain governments. Substantial social cost will be incurred if any age group diminishes or multiplies out of proportion. This article clarifies the facts concealed underneath those breathtaking anecdotes. The statistics of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, where people have strong passion for the birth sign dragon and distaste for tiger, shows that there are neither shrinking tiger nor bulging dragon cohorts for the newborn or the whole population.

KEYWORDS:

• Birth signs of the Chinese Zodiac
• tradition
• year of tiger and dragon

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Andy Chien, Horace Chueh, two anonymous referees and the editor for helpful comments. Particular thanks to Gary Yu and the editor for the data of Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively. Any errors in this article are the authors’ sole responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Chih-Hsing Hung http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8432-7638

Der-Yuan Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4418-9768

Yi-Hsi Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9330-9039

Notes

1. A regular lunar year has 354 days. To make up the shortfall in relation to the solar calendar, there is a leap month every two or three years on the lunar calendar.

2. In the case of Taiwan, as stated before, the birth signs tiger, dragon and boar appear six times, while horse, monkey and rooster five. For Hong Kong and Singapore, the birth signs that rank top four appear with the same frequency.

3. We did test the census data of Singapore with racial breakdown and found no abnormality on the distribution of the birth signs among the ethnic Indians and Malays.