Chinese New Year Snake. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates. One scheme of continuously numbered Chinese-calendar years assigns 4709 to the year beginning, 2011, but this is not universally accepted; the calendar is traditionally cyclical, not continuously numbered. Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are sometimes numbered from the purported reign of the mythical Yellow Emperor in the 3rd millennium BCE. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars,
Dragon (zodiac) Dragon (zodiac) The Dragon () is the fifth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. It is also the only zodiac sign represented by a mythical creature, rather than a real life animal. The Year of the Dragon is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 辰, pronounced "chen". It has been proposed by one academic researcher that the Earthly Branch character may have been associated with scorpions; it may have symbolized the Star Antares. In the Buddhist calendar used in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, the Dragon is