In the Chinese Zodiac Compatibility browser, the Rabbit sits inside exactly one San He trine and one Liu Chong opposition. The trine partners are the Goat and the Pig; the single opposition partner is the Rooster. That covers two of the Rabbit's eleven possible pairings. The remaining eight animals (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Monkey, and Dog) are not classified by these two sourced rules, and the tool deliberately labels them as such rather than guessing. The browser is not designed to declare a Rabbit "compatible" or "incompatible" with anyone in real life; it only reports which of the two traditional rules a Rabbit pair falls into. Two animals must be entered directly, since the tool does not convert a Gregorian birth year into a sign or guess across the Lunar New Year boundary. This article walks through what the browser actually shows when the Rabbit is one of the two selections, why the result is the same after Swap, and what the eight unclassified pairs do and do not mean.
What "compatibility" means inside this limited browser
The Chinese Zodiac Compatibility browser draws a narrow fence around the word "compatibility." It deliberately covers two narrow cultural relationships, the four sourced San He trines and the six sourced Liu Chong oppositions, and nothing else. No percentage is produced. No overall ranking is implied. The browser is a literal lookup table: pick two animals, find out which bucket the pair lands in, and read the classification that the source materials support.
Because the rules are so narrow, the answer for any animal is finite and easy to audit. Each of the twelve cycle animals appears in exactly one trine and exactly one direct opposition. The Rabbit, for example, has two trine partners (Goat and Pig) and one opposition partner (Rooster). That leaves eight animals that the rules say nothing about. The browser's interface mirrors that structure: when you select the Rabbit in either slot, the page displays the Rabbit's full trine group, the Rabbit's single direct opposite, and the resulting classification for whichever animal you chose in the second slot.
This narrow scope is the contract, not a limitation to apologize for. Sources describe other named traditions such as Six Harmonies, harms, punishments, and the Five Elements, and some traditions blend them into a single ranked "best match" list. The browser does not merge those because the source language and meanings do not agree across traditions. Anyone who needs a fuller reading is pointed toward a complete BaZi or Four Pillars analysis, which considers year, month, day, and hour branches together.
How to check the Rabbit against any other animal
The browser works in two controlled steps. Both selectors list the canonical animals in cycle order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. No dates, names, or accounts are required.
- Open the browser at Chinese Zodiac Compatibility and confirm the two selectors are visible. Each control is a native picker with a 44-pixel minimum height so the choices remain readable on narrow screens without any drag gesture.
- Pick the Rabbit in the first selector, or in the second if you prefer to start from the partner animal. The selector is fixed to the canonical label "Rabbit"; regional variants such as Cat or Boar are intentionally not substituted because those substitutions belong to a separately declared cultural scope.
- Pick the second animal in the remaining selector. Choose from the twelve canonical cycle animals. If you only know a Gregorian year, stop here and use a separate year-to-sign tool first; the compatibility browser does not perform that conversion for you.
- Read the classification banner directly below the controls. It will state one of three things: "Traditional trine (San He)" if the second animal is Goat or Pig, "Direct opposition (Liu Chong)" if the second animal is Rooster, or "Not classified by this limited two-rule model" for any other animal.
- Inspect each animal's profile card beneath the result. Both cards list the full trine group and the single direct opposite of the selected animal. The Rabbit card always shows "Rabbit, Goat, Pig" for trine and "Rabbit ↔ Rooster" for opposition.
- Tap Swap to exchange the two controlled values. The classification does not change; only the display order does. This symmetry check confirms that the rule set is applied the same way regardless of which animal was entered first.
The Rabbit's San He trine: Goat and Pig
According to the four sourced trines stored in the browser, the Rabbit belongs to the group "Rabbit, Goat, Pig." A trine is a three-animal cluster that traditional materials describe as mutually supportive. Within this group there are exactly three unordered pairs: Rabbit–Goat, Rabbit–Pig, and Goat–Pig. Two of those pairs involve the Rabbit, and both are reported by the browser as a traditional trine match.
The third pair, Goat–Pig, also receives the same label when both animals are selected, even though the Rabbit is not one of them. The browser's classification is symmetric: any two distinct members of the same trine group are labeled the same way. A sign paired with itself, such as Rabbit–Rabbit, is not treated as a trine pair and produces no classification at all.
| Pair | San He label | Source rule |
|---|---|---|
| Rabbit + Goat | Traditional trine (San He) | Same trine group: Rabbit, Goat, Pig |
| Rabbit + Pig | Traditional trine (San He) | Same trine group: Rabbit, Goat, Pig |
| Rabbit + Rabbit | No classification | Self-pair is excluded from the trine rule |
The Rabbit's Liu Chong opposition: Rooster
The browser stores six direct opposition pairs as literal fixtures. The Rabbit's single opposite in this narrow model is the Rooster. Selecting Rabbit in one slot and Rooster in the other produces the result "Direct opposition (Liu Chong)." Swapping the two selections produces the same label. None of the trine pairs and any of the opposition pairs overlap by design, so Rabbit and Rooster cannot simultaneously be classified as a trine and as an opposition.
The term "opposition" here is the literal label attached to the sourced pair. The browser does not assign it a strength value, a percentage, or a verdict on whether a Rabbit–Rooster friendship, family tie, or partnership will work. That is a deliberate choice: the rule simply names a sourced relationship, and the user decides what to make of it.
The Rabbit's eight unclassified pairs
Every remaining animal sits outside both rules. Selecting the Rabbit against Rat, Ox, Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Monkey, or Dog returns the explicit message "Not classified by this limited two-rule model." That phrase is the third possible outcome of the browser, and it is by far the most common outcome for any animal that has only one trine and one opposition.
| Rabbit paired with | Browser result | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Goat | Traditional trine (San He) | Same trine group |
| Pig | Traditional trine (San He) | Same trine group |
| Rooster | Direct opposition (Liu Chong) | One of the six sourced oppositions |
| Rat | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Ox | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Tiger | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Dragon | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Snake | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Horse | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Monkey | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
| Dog | Not classified by this limited two-rule model | Outside both sourced rules |
Across all twelve cycle animals, this adds up to a small, countable set. The four trines generate exactly twelve unordered pairs; the six oppositions generate six more; that is eighteen classified pairs out of sixty-six possible unordered pairs of distinct animals. The remaining forty-eight pairs are described as unclassified. The Rabbit participates in three of the eighteen classified pairs and eight of the forty-eight unclassified pairs, which matches its single trine plus single opposition structure.
The unclassified label is not a hidden ranking. It does not mean "neutral," "safe," "ideal," or "doomed." Other traditions describe harms, punishments, and Six Harmonies; some sources merge these into one ranked list. The browser refuses to merge them because the source language does not agree on what those labels mean. A user who wants that broader view is encouraged to consult a complete BaZi or Four Pillars reference.
Why the browser stops at two sourced rules
Restricting the answer to four trines and six oppositions is the easiest way to keep every claim auditable. Each of the twelve animals appears in exactly one trine and exactly one opposition; the two sets never overlap; the classification is symmetric; and the same rule applies after Swap. Verification in the product code counts twelve unordered trine pairs, six opposition pairs, and forty-eight other unordered pairs, and confirms that every Rabbit-relevant pair belongs to the expected bucket.
Functionality that would extend the result, such as a hidden compatibility score, a ranked recommendation, or a Gregorian year conversion, is deliberately not built into this widget. The browser does not ask for a name, gender, location, birth date, account, upload, network service, cookie, or local storage. It does not persist the two selections anywhere beyond React page state. The visible limitation statement reminds users that year-animal matching is a cultural reference, not a scientific measurement, and is not a substitute for a complete BaZi analysis.
For readers who only know a Gregorian year and not a cycle animal, the related Chinese Zodiac Calculator handles the year-to-sign lookup while keeping the Lunar New Year boundary visible. The two tools share the canonical twelve-position cycle order but serve different tasks, which is why the Compatibility browser does not perform that conversion itself.
Verifying the Rabbit result with Swap
Because the rule set is symmetric, Swap is the easiest way to confirm the result without trusting a badge. Tap Swap after selecting Rabbit and Rooster, and the banner still reads "Direct opposition (Liu Chong)" with the labels flipped. Repeat with Rabbit and Goat; the banner still reads "Traditional trine (San He)." Repeat with Rabbit and Tiger; the banner still reads "Not classified by this limited two-rule model." The classification does not depend on which slot the Rabbit was placed in.
The same symmetry applies when the second animal is something you are less familiar with. The profile cards underneath the result list the full trine group and the single direct opposite for whichever animal was selected, so you can read each card and re-derive the classification from the rules. If the banner reports a trine but the second animal does not appear in the first animal's trine group, that is a sign that something has been misread, and the browser is built to make such a mismatch visible rather than hidden.
For broader context on the two-rule model, the Hong Kong Observatory's 12-Year Animal Cycle reference page documents the canonical animal sequence, and a regional cross-check appears in the National Folk Museum of Korea's Harmony of the Zodiac Animals page. Neither source is used to invent extra rules; both are cited so that the four trines and six oppositions stay verifiable against published references rather than folk summaries.