1971 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Metal Pig
1971 is the year of the Yin Metal Pig. The Metal Pig year runs from January 27th, 1971 to February 14, 1972. If you were born in 1971 on or after January 27, your Chinese zodiac sign is the Pig and your element is Metal. Born earlier in January? You belong to the year before.
Born in January or early February 1971? Read this first
The Chinese zodiac year does not start on 1 January. The Metal Pig year begins on January 27th, 1971. That one date changes the answer for everyone born in the weeks before it.
You were born before the new year turned, so you belong to 1970's sign — not 1971's.
Read the 1970 page instead →The rest of this page is yours. Everything below describes the Yin Metal Pig.
This is the single most common mistake in Chinese astrology, and it is why two people born weeks apart in the same calendar year can have completely different signs.
What a Metal Pig actually is
A Metal Pig is someone born in a Pig year that also carries the Metal element. In Chinese astrology your animal is your zodiac sign (it shapes who you are), and the element is the "energy flavour" running through it that year. So a Metal Pig blends the Pig's nature with Metal's energy of discipline, precision and standards — a more specific portrait than the Pig alone.
Metal in plain terms. Metal is the energy of autumn — refined, clear and quality-focused. It adds structure, integrity and a sharp sense of what matters and what to let go.
They cut through noise and hold a standard others rise to meet.
Rigid Metal can turn critical, perfectionist or emotionally guarded.
Pig strengths and blind spots
Where you are strong. Pigs are the zodiac's most genuinely warm sign, open, honest, generous with time and resources. They make friends easily and keep them for life. Their optimism is earned, not naive.
Where it costs you. Pigs can be too trusting, prone to indulgence, and slow to leave bad situations. Their generosity sometimes attracts takers.
Work that suits a Metal Pig
Chef, hospitality, teacher, nurse, philanthropist, artist, farmer, counselor.
Read that as a description of the conditions you do your best work in, not a list you have to pick from. Metal shapes how you work as much as the Pig shapes what you are drawn to.
Who the Pig gets on with
In the classical system the twelve animals fall into groups that support each other and pairs that grind. For the Pig, the natural allies are Tiger, Rabbit and Goat, and the hardest work tends to be with Snake and Monkey.
Lucky colours, numbers and hours for the Metal Pig
These belong to the Pig as a sign, which means they are shared by everyone born in a Pig year. A colour chosen for you works differently: it is picked to feed whichever of the five elements your own chart is short of, and two Pigs can need opposite colours for that reason.
Other Metal Pig years
The animal cycles every 12 years and the element every 10, so the exact pairing Metal Pig only comes round once every 60 years. Anyone born in these years shares your sign exactly:
Your birth year is one pillar out of four
Everything above is true of you — and equally true of everyone else born in 1971. Millions of people share the Metal Pig sign.
What separates your chart from theirs is the month, day and hour you were born. Those three add three more pillars to the one on this page. Together they decide whether your core element — the character at the centre of your chart, traditionally called your Day Master — is supported or drained, which of the five elements you are carrying too much of, which one is missing, and which ten-year cycle you are standing in right now.
That is the part a page about 1971 cannot know. It needs your birth time.
See your full chart, not just your year
Free, and it takes a birth date. Your Energy Chart reads all four pillars and shows the element balance behind them.
or browse every zodiac year →