
Monkey years
- #9 of 12
- Element: metal
- early autumn
- 15~17h
The monkey holds early autumn, where metal first sets. Fruit begins to harden here, so the move to a result comes quickly. Water hides inside the branch as well, pairing quick thinking with quick hands.
The monkey is called resourceful. Its branch is early autumn, where fruit begins to harden, so the move to a result is genuinely quick. Resourceful means fast hands, though; whether the result stays is decided by other characters.
Earth and water lie under the metal among its hidden stems, so what supports and what delivers both sit in one seat. Learning alone and producing alone comes naturally — and the step of collaborating gets skipped just as naturally.
The five year pillars inside this sign
The branch stays the same; the heavenly stem above it changes every twelve years, and with it the whole reading. Find your birth year below.

Green Monkey甲申
1944 · 2004
Metal cutting wood — a rhythm of breaking and rejoining, repeated.

Red Monkey丙申
1956 · 2016
Fire melting metal — strong push, high speed.

Yellow Monkey戊申
1968 · 2028
Earth producing metal — the force runs toward making and sending out.

White Monkey庚申
1980
Metal on metal — hard, and inclined to deliver alone.

Black Monkey壬申
1932 · 1992
Metal releasing water — quick turns of thought, and words that land.
Which signs Monkey meets well
Branch relations are fixed by position in the cycle, so they hold for every year of this sign.
Six harmony — the easiest pair
Fire and metal, which should clash, are bound as a harmony instead. They sharpen each other rather than wear each other down.
Trine — the group that gets things done
Together these three form a water frame. Their strength shows where information and flow are handled.
Clash — meeting head-on
Metal and wood facing off. Both move fast in speed and direction, so once they diverge the gap widens quickly.
Hidden grudge — friction without a reason
Both read the room quickly, in different directions. Each anticipates the other's intent, and that is exactly what tires them.
Sign-to-sign is the coarse layer — one twelfth of the population shares it. Real compatibility is read from the day pillar, which needs a birth date.
One catch: Ipchun, not January 1
A sign does not change at midnight on January 1. It changes at Ipchun, the solar term falling around February 4. Someone born in January 2016 is not Monkey — that birthday still belongs to Goat, the 乙未 year. If you were born in January or the first days of February, the sign most sites hand you may be off by one. ARO reads the solar-term boundary, computed to the minute.
Your sign is one of four characters in your chart. The other three — month, day, and hour — decide how it actually plays out.
ARO reads patterns, not destiny. This page is a way in, not a verdict.