Chinese Zodiac Sign - Rat Fine Art Print

The 1st Chinese Zodiac Sign is Rat. In this drawing, I used the concept of 五谷丰登 (Wu Gu Feng Deng), meaning A Plentiful Harvest of Five Grains or just Plentiful Harvest. For this concept the Five Grains are 5 traditional Chinese crops of millet, beans, hemp, wheat, and rice. However, some of them may look very similar to each other so I used corn and peanuts to add more textures. Peanuts and corn are not native to China but since their introduction in ancient China they have been deeply absorbed into Chinese food culture. You may notice there are only 4 crops, but pay attention to the oil lamp. Before electric lighting was introduced in China, people used oil lamps. The oil lamp used mineral or edible oil with soybean oil being one of the common sources. Rat loves to gather food in fall for winter and it looks like this Rat is busy building its stockpile. Good luck! Year: 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020. If your birthday is in mid January to late February, please research and see what is your exact sign because the Lunar calendar is a different from traditional Gregorian calendar.