1983 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Water Pig
1983 is the year of the Yin Water Pig. The Water Pig year runs from February 13th, 1983 to February 1, 1984. If you were born in 1983 on or after February 13, your Chinese zodiac sign is the Pig and your element is Water. Born earlier in January? You belong to the year before.
Born in January or early February 1983? Read this first
The Chinese zodiac year does not start on 1 January. The Water Pig year begins on February 13th, 1983. 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 1982's sign — not 1983's.
Read the 1982 page instead →The rest of this page is yours. Everything below describes the Yin Water 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 Water Pig actually is
A Water Pig is someone born in a Pig year that also carries the Water 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 Water Pig blends the Pig's nature with Water's energy of depth, intuition and adaptability — a more specific portrait than the Pig alone.
Water in plain terms. Water is the energy of winter — deep, quiet and endlessly resourceful. It adds wisdom, perception and the ability to flow around any obstacle rather than fight it.
They read what is beneath the surface and find the path no one else sees.
When Water pools it can become fearful, withdrawn or hard to pin down.
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 Water 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. Water 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 Water 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 Water Pig years
The animal cycles every 12 years and the element every 10, so the exact pairing Water 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 1983. Millions of people share the Water 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 1983 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 →