your birthyear determines your animal sign. see the following link: http://www.taofengshui.com/tao_astrology/

Oh heavenly days - this is a 116# Ox checking in.

i'll see if i can find more links because you have to buy the book in order to find more info about your sign at the above link.

I was born in the year of the Snake (which I found out from a placemat at a Chinese restaurant,) which means I'm very private, vain, and artistic. Me to a tee!

according to the placemat, i'm a monkey....

Hey! I'm a monkey, too! I thought so, but didn't know it exactly, because I wasn't sure if chinese new year is before or after my birhtday in february... Thanks, Wolf!

I'm an ox too!!!

ha-ha! No, like Marcia, I mean!

*lol*

Ree, I think we are calabash sisters as well as Chinese astro-mates. When I told John he was a snake, he thought it was perverse that of all the animals available they gave him the only one he was afraid of and truly loathed. How does that help, and where do we get one of those ubiquitous place mats? (The Chinese restaurants here are usually family of the first generation in the US and do not waste their time of things like place mats!)

And, in Chinese here, Time = Money!!!

Next time I go to that restaurant, I'll see if I can snag one of those placemats, but I think they keep them under glass on top of the tables.

i can get one!

Good, because I don't eat at that restaurant very often. It makes me sick every time I do!

we usually go as a group (work) so next time, i'll grap a placemat. once i get the thing, am i to scan it and post it here? (i'm not sure i can shrink it and still have it readable)....

If you can't, send me a copy of the large one and I will work on it with my stuff here. (You mean there are places which have placemats you can take out?!)

Amy, why do you get sick when you eat at restaurants???

I don't get sick at all restaurants--just that particular one with the Chinese astrology placemats. Their food is kind of scary, and I haven't eaten there in a long while.

Has anyone examined their trash bins? We had one here...nah, I don't think you want to know about this...=P

I once was at an Indian place in Kopenhagen and a cockroach came walking out of the menu-card.....

Well, they publish the restaurant inspector's report in the newspaper here, and that place didn't fare very well (surprise, surprise.)

we had a chinese place called taste of china. they found nutria in the a/c vents. it was shut down, exterminated and will forever be affectionately called taste of rat.

The one in Hilo had rubbish cans full of bits and pieces of pussycats...

Is this where I interject that this was Chairman Meow's favorite restaurant?!

exactly!

Oh, how foul!!! Luckily I've never experienced places like that - apart from my own cooking, that is.

Isabel, was it an Indian or Danish cockroach?

In Chinese Astrology, do animals have people years in which they were born which also dictates that they become a culinary delicacy in another lifetime?! Never though about it that way...

gross!

...sorry! On occasion when my mind is not properly supervised it just wanders around thinking up odd things to entertain itself. Wish it had an off-button!

But if you think about it, in Asia the standards for what animals people eat are much different than what we eat here. Asians have no qualms about eating dogs, and I've seen things about rat restaurants in China, but cats I don't know about. Obviously so, huh?

...and I know they eat cockroaches - which they cleanse by feeding them cornmeal for a few days. No Thank You! *bleah*

To each his own, I guess...

They can have my share!!!