Zhao Yong , (Chinese, 1291-1361), Ink and color on paper, F1945.32
The lunar new year begins today and celebrates the year of the horse, one of the twelve-year cycle of animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac. Dating from as early as 1000 BCE, the traditional Chinese method of counting years is based on the sixty-year rotation of the planet Jupiter (known as the “year star”) around the sun. Each sixty-year period is divided into five cycles of twelve years, and each of the twelve years is associated with a particular animal. In general, each year contains twelve lunar months of twenty-eight or twenty-nine days. As a result, lunar years vary in length and do not start or end at the same time each year. The current Year of the Horse begins today, and is observed through February 18, 2015.
According to archaeological discoveries, the character for “horse” (ma) appears in the most ancient form of Chinese writing, which dates from the fourteenth to eleventh century BCE. Surviving painted images of horses date from around the fourth century BCE. Since the species of horse native to China were not as large or strong as those from Central Asia, traders during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) imported the highly coveted “heavenly horses” (tianma) from the Central Asian kingdom of Ferghana.
Horses did not emerge as a prominent independent category in the Chinese painting tradition until the Tang dynasty (618–907). From that time on, horses appear as a recurring theme, especially in depictions of travel, trade, hunting, and military exercises and in genre paintings showing the nomadic tribes that lived to the north and west of China.
One more thing: Those born in the Year of the Horse (1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, and 2014) are said to be intelligent, strong, and energetic with an outgoing nature. They enjoy interacting with others and are good at multi-tasking, although they rarely finish projects because they’re off to the next one before they finish the last. Typically they have money issues, and when it comes to matters of the heart, they fall hard and fast.
