The Enthusiastic Rooster

The Rooster is the counterpart of the Monkey and represents a "Yin" or feminine quality. They are often abrasive and aggressive, and are sometimes considered rude.

Roosters are very concerned with their appearance, and can spend many hours standing in front of mirrors. They often dress a bit colorful for some tastes, but are usually stylish.

Roosters are always busy, seldom being accused of being a couch potato. The have many talents and typically succeed in anything that they attempt. They make good detectives, doctors, nurses, and troubleshooters. Rooster personalities have extremely high ideals and have little tolerance for those who don't. They often begin many projects at one time to keep busy, but this sometimes leads to family problems, as they have a tendency to ignore those who are closest although they remain deeply in love and fail to see any problem in the relationship.

Traditionally, Roosters are seen as the embodiment of direct, forceful and forthright behavior.

Personality

Hardworking, resourceful, courageous and talented, Roosters are self-assured people. They possess powerful personalities and are notoriously dominant. In groups they are vivacious, amusing and popular. But Roosters can be conceited creatures, vain and boastful, with a strong egotistical need to constantly be the center of attention. Excellent at small talk, they can be the life of any party. Roosters are talkative types, outspoken, frank, open, honest -- but a little too blunt at times. A polished debater and able to cogently refute any opinion, the Rooster is a talented polemicist, and could be an excellent journalist or writer. With the Rooster's dedication to work well done, he or she would also make a good economist or a gifted administrator.

These people are born organizers, refined and elegant. They are tidy-minded and like to keep everything neat and shipshape. Their affairs will be all in order, accounts up to the minute and documents systematically filed away. They function best in an environment where everything is organized and their schedules programmed. When it comes to making decisions of any kind, Roosters prefer to carefully consider all sides of a situation before coming to a conclusion. In conflicts, Roosters will push to the extreme but flee before open hostilities break out. Their reflective and analytical abilities sometimes get the better of them. They must constantly question their point of view to ascertain its validity.

The management of finances is perhaps their strength, both on a private and professional level. When it comes to money, Roosters are prudent and careful. They are brilliant managers of other people's money; financial advisers, bank managers, and accountants would all do well to be born in the Year of the Rooster. The Rooster has the reputation of finding money in the most unlikely places, like drawing blood from a stone. In Vietnam they say that, thanks to the strength of his beak and claws, the Rooster can find a worm in a desert. This metaphor goes a long way to explain the continual and restless activity that characterizes him.

The Rooster will touch the heights and depths during the three phases of his life, business-wise as well as romantically. They will go from poverty to riches, from ideal love to the most sordid of emotional entanglements. The Rooster's old age will be happy, however.

Legend has it in the East that two Roosters under the same roof make life intolerable for everyone else.

The Dashing Rooster

Roosters see the world as either black or white; when it comes to individual people, they will immediately either love or hate them on sight. Their love life has all the elements of romantic excitement. They like the idea of dominating their partner, but this notion is more for fun and show than it is from real conviction. Emotionally, Roosters are said to be passionate and, though they may possess a very active sex drive, they tend to lack firm personal commitment when it comes to serious relationships. The salient characteristic attributed to these people is their honesty, and Roosters are never backwards in coming forward to speak their mind. Their lack of tact, coupled with a sanctimonious attitude to life, has been responsible for the breaking up of many a Rooster's marriage. Yet Rooster males are dashing, handsome fellows and will have young women flocking to their sides. Their Hen counterparts, stylish in the classical vein, will attract their suitors through their no-nonsense, down-to-earth approach to life.

Relationships

The Rooster man likes to be in the company of women, among whom he can show off, shine, swagger and generally demonstrate what a clever fellow he is. However, he rarely goes out for a night with the boys; men bore him to extinction. His Hen counterpart also likes the company of other women -- that's not to say that men bore her! -- and she chooses those professions which keep her constantly in touch with them.

In love, the Rooster will often do themselves harm to gain or to keep the affection of the loved one. They will disappoint each other often too, for the reality will never match up to the dreams they would so much like to share with each other. There's one thing in their favor, though -- they really are sincere about those dreams!

Neither male nor female Rooster will wear their hearts on their sleeves; they keep even the minutest detail about their sexual exploits and love affairs strictly to themselves. Because of their scrupulous honesty, when happily settled in a permanent relationship, Roosters are highly unlikely to deceive or cheat on their partners.

The Snake, Ox and Dragon understand Roosters. They would gain much from friendship with the Monkey and Boar. The Rabbit does not trust the Rooster and won't put up with his boasting.