Rooster 雞 / 鸡

The Rooster is the animal that ends the night, and the sign carries all of that: punctuality, plain speech, an eye for detail, a certain amount of showing off. 雞 is a near-homophone for 吉, auspicious, which is why the bird turns up all over Chinese New Year paper-cuts.

It came tenth because it stopped, in most tellings, to help — with the Monkey and the Goat, on a raft the three of them built together. The three signs are grouped in some readings for exactly that reason.

Xiang Li paints a whole yard, not a bird: two hens and seven chicks, each chick a different color and each one doing something different. Look for the black chick standing on its mother's back.