Wood Ox

Lunar New Year fell on Jan 31. Anyone born before that date belongs to the previous year (Rat).

Ox people have a certain thickness to them: good news and bad news both have to sink in before they land. While everyone else changes plans three times a week, they can stay with one unglamorous task for five years without announcing it or asking for credit. First meetings read as flat, with few words and a laugh that arrives half a beat late, but once they say yes you never have to ask again. What stays hidden is the stubbornness. Silence is not agreement; it usually means the verdict is already written.

The soil at this hour is the richest, and the mulberry does not grow tall; its branches press low, dense enough to shade a person walking under them. Such people are not conspicuous, their position is not high, but their patch is the sturdiest: fine hands, clear accounts, not one promise dropped. They are slow as an ox. Others have changed methods twice while they stay on the first road, and they often arrive early. They do not compete for the light.