Chou · Ox

Meaning

Chou is the second Earthly Branch: the branch of the Ox, of the north-north-east, of the double hour between one and three in the morning and of the twelfth and last month of the Chinese year, from early January to the start of spring. It is Earth, yin, and the earth of deep winter: cold, wet and hard, ground in which nothing yet shows but everything is kept. The Han historians read its name as 紐 niǔ, a knot or a tie: in Chou, new life is still bound up, held fast until its time.

It is read as patience, endurance and steady work, the strength that carries a load without complaint, as the Ox does, and the quiet confidence of what is well stored. Chou keeps: provisions, promises, skills learned slowly, and what it holds tends to last. Its difficulty is the knot itself: it can hold on too tightly, to habits, to resentments, to the way things have always been, and be slow to let the spring in when it comes.

Chou is one of the four storehouse branches, with Chen, Wei and Xu, the Earth that closes each season and holds three stems: Ji, its own Earth, Gui, the Water of the winter it ends, and Xin, the Metal it stores. The tradition calls Chou and Chen wet earth, Wei and Xu dry earth, and reads a chart’s Earth differently by which of them it holds.

In practice

• In BaZi, Chou holds Ji as its main qi, with Gui and Xin: an Earth branch with Water and Metal inside it. It is the storehouse of Metal, where Geng is stored in the life stages, and the Nobleman of Jia, Wu and Geng. A Chou month, from about 6 January to about 4 February, still belongs to the solar year that began the Lichun before: a birth on 20 January 2026 is in the Ox month of the Snake year.
• Its relations: Chou is in harmony with Zi, a pair that leans towards Earth; it closes the Metal trine with Si and You, and the winter trio with Hai and Zi. It clashes with Wei, the other wet-and-dry pair of storehouses, harms Wu, belongs to the punishment of power with Xu and Wei, and forms a destruction with Chen.
• In Chinese astrology, Chou is the Ox: 2021 was a Metal Ox year, 2033 will be a Water Ox year.
• In Feng Shui, Chou is the first mountain of the north-east, from 22.5° to 37.5°, a yin one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan the branch is read ushi, the ox; in Korea chuk; in Vietnam Sửu, whose animal is the water buffalo. Japan keeps a summer custom named after it: on the Day of the Ox in midsummer, Doyō no Ushi no Hi, people eat grilled eel for strength in the heat.
• The Yi Jing’s sovereign hexagram for the Chou month is Approach (Lin, the 19th): two whole lines below four broken ones, yang growing a little more under the winter.
• Western astrology has its own sign of patient earth in Capricorn, where the Sun stands for the first half of the Chou month; both read the last of winter as a season of effort and slow building.

Origin and history

Chou is among the branch characters of the Shang oracle bones; its ancient form is a hand with bent fingers, gripping, which suits the Han reading of a knot. Tradition says that the Shang began their year with the Chou month, before the Zhou moved it to Zi and the Han, in 104 BC, to Yin. The Huainanzi (139 BC) sets Chou in the north-east at the end of winter; Sima Qian and Ban Gu read it as the tie that holds the sprouts, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) as the twelfth month, when things begin to move and set to work.

BaZi’s classics, from the Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty to the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming, read the four storehouses as the keys of the chart: what a storehouse holds can stay locked or be opened, notably when another branch clashes with it, which is why the clash of two storehouses, Chou and Wei, Chen and Xu, is read as an opening as much as a shock.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune numbers Chou 1 among the branches. The Chou month runs from the exact moment of Xiaohan, the Sun at 285°, to Lichun, the Sun at 315°, and is the last of the solar year; the Chou hour is 01:00 to 03:00 on true solar time at the birthplace by default. In BaZi’s balance its hidden stems count 0.6 for Ji, 0.3 for Gui and 0.1 for Xin, twice in the month branch. Its relations follow the rules on the branches’ places, the punishment of power being one of three fixed groups; its stars come from the classical tables: Chou is the Canopy for a year or day branch of its own Metal trine.

Correspondences