In the minds of most people, rats are always associated with stealing food, causing damages, and spreading epidemics. Their sneaky behavior, sharp snouts, and ubiquitous presence are truly unappealing. However, in fact, throughout the long course of Chinese history, the image of the rat is not entirely so bad. They have also had a respected side.
In ancient times, rats were regarded as symbols of life reproduction due to their high fertility. In that era of extremely low productivity and difficult population growth, people were full of hope for vigorous fertility, and the trait of rats having many offspring in one litter perfectly matched people's wish for a thriving family. Therefore, in ancient people’s beliefs, rats were given a special status, and it comes as no surprise that they were selected as one of the Chinese zodiac animals.
There is also a very interesting legend telling why the rat was selected to be a member of the twelve zodiac signs. It is said that the God of Heaven Jade Emperor intended to select twelve animals as the zodiac signs and announced it to the animals, asking them to come and sign up. Hearing this news, the rat knew that it was too small in size to have any advantage among the many animals. However, the rat was intelligent and cunning. It came up with a plan and learned in advance that the diligent ox would surely set off to sign up at the Jade Emperor’s hall early. On the day of registration, it took advantage of the ox's inattention and quietly hid on the ox's horns. The ox moved steadily forward and arrived at the Jade Emperor’s hall first. Just when the ox thought it was sure to win first place, the rat seized the opportunity and “whoosh” jumped down from the ox's horns and ran to the Jade Emperor before the ox. The Jade Emperor saw that the rat was the first to arrive, so he ranked it first.
As for why Rat could be the sole leader among the twelve zodiac signs, there is another theory closely related to the traditional Chinese timekeeping method. In the twelve time slots of the day, the period of Zi from nowadays 23:00 to 01:00 is the beginning of the day, and this is precisely the time when rats are most active. Their activity pattern perfectly matches the period of Zi. Ancient people based the correspondence between animals and the twelve time slots of the day on their habits and accordingly linked rat to the period of Zi, thus ranking rat as the first among the twelve zodiac signs.