Chinese New Year 2027 greetings in Mandarin

The best Chinese New Year 2027 greetings in Mandarin are the ones made for the Year of the Goat: 羊年大吉 yángnián dàjí, "great luck in the Year of the Goat", 羊年吉祥 yángnián jíxiáng, and the pun 三羊开泰 sān yáng kāi tài, "three goats bring in peace". Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February 2027, and the Year of the Goat runs until 25 January 2028. In the sixty-year cycle of the Chinese calendar it is a 丁未 dīngwèi year, a Fire Goat. Below are the Goat-year greetings with what each one means and why it works, wishes ready to copy for family, friends and work, the 2027 dates from New Year’s Eve to the Lantern Festival, the years people born under the Goat were born in, and whether 羊 is a goat, a sheep or a ram.

Updated 27 October 2026 · 15 min read

Year of the Goat greetings

The first three are a frame that works every year: the year’s animal, 年 nián, "year", then a wish. 大吉 dàjí is "very auspicious, extremely lucky", 快乐 kuàilè "happy" and 吉祥 jíxiáng "lucky, auspicious". 羊年 is said with two rising tones, yáng-nián, like a question in English. The last two are puns that only a Goat year allows.

羊年吉祥: the goat inside 祥

吉祥 is an ordinary word for "auspicious", but in a Goat year it carries a second layer: the 祥 xiáng of 吉祥 has a 羊 in it. That is not decoration. Wiktionary traces 祥 to a character that was originally just 羊: the 示 "altar" on its left was added later to tell the two apart, and 羊 stayed on as the part that gives the sound. The Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen’s character dictionary of the Han dynasty, defines 羊 in two characters, 羊，祥也, "羊 is 祥". Wiktionary lists 吉羊 as an ancient spelling of 吉祥, and Chinese Wikipedia notes that 大吉羊 was written for 大吉祥, "great good fortune".

三羊开泰: three goats for three yang lines

三羊开泰 is a pun on an older New Year wish, 三阳开泰 sān yáng kāi tài, in which the yáng is 阳, the yang of yin and yang. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionary explains it from the Book of Changes: Han dynasty scholars matched twelve of its hexagrams to the twelve months, and the first month’s is 泰 tài, "peace, prosperity", with three yang lines at the bottom, the point where yin begins to fade and yang to grow. 三阳开泰 therefore came to be said in praise of a new year; the dictionary quotes the Ming statesman Zhang Juzheng using it in a New Year’s Day address to the throne.

Swap 阳 for 羊, which sounds exactly the same, and the three yang lines become three goats. The swap is old. In chapter 91 of Journey to the West, the sixteenth-century novel, the Monkey King finds guardian spirits, in disguise, driving three goats while his master is a prisoner of demons. They explain that the three goats are there "to answer to the words 开泰", calling it 三阳开泰, to break the 否 pǐ, the "blocked" fortune, that has fallen on his master. A few lines earlier the spirits have explained why it fell: 泰极生否, when 泰 reaches its height, 否 is born. Three goats were a stock good-luck picture in Chinese folk art for the same reason, and in a Goat year the pun is everywhere: the theme of the 2015 New Year carnival in Malacca, Malaysia, was 三羊开泰迎新春, "three goats bring in peace as we welcome the spring".

喜气羊羊: the goat in 洋洋

喜气洋洋 xǐqì yángyáng is a four-character idiom for "beaming with joy". Taiwan’s dictionary quotes it from the classic novel The Water Margin. 洋洋 yángyáng and 羊羊 yángyáng are said identically, so in a Goat year the 洋 "ocean" can be written 羊: the Malaysian radio station 988 called its 2015 Year of the Goat album 喜气羊羊过好年, "brimming with goat joy, have a good New Year". The pun is only visible in writing; said aloud, 喜气羊羊 is simply 喜气洋洋.

Chinese New Year wishes for 2027, ready to copy

Use 你 nǐ for friends and people your own age, 您 nín for grandparents, a teacher, a client or anyone senior, and 你们 nǐmen or 大家 dàjiā, "everyone", for several people. 祝 zhù is "to wish someone something": the person comes first, then the wish. Chinese text uses full-width punctuation, ， and ！.

For family

For friends

For work, with 您 and 大家

The set phrases, with CC-CEDICT’s meanings: 身体健康 "good health", 心想事成 "may your wishes come true", 万事如意 "may all your hopes be fulfilled", 事业有成 "professional success", 生意兴隆 "a thriving business". 新春 xīnchūn is "the new spring", the days just after New Year’s Day, so 新春快乐 is a greeting for the festival itself; 新年快乐 also works, and is said on 1 January too.

拜年: paying the New Year call

The verb for all of this is 拜年 bàinián, "to pay a New Year call": to visit someone on New Year’s Day or soon after, usually bringing a present, and wish them a happy New Year. Wiktionary’s example is what a child says at the door: 阿姨，我们来给您拜年了！ Āyí, wǒmen lái gěi nín bàinián le!, "Auntie, we’ve come to wish you a happy New Year!" The 红包 hóngbāo, the red packet of money given at New Year, has its own etiquette: who gives it to whom, and why it is red, are on colors in Chinese.

Chinese New Year 2027: the dates

Chinese New Year follows the traditional calendar, 农历 nónglì, so its date moves against the Western calendar from year to year. These dates are from the Hong Kong Observatory’s conversion tables for 2027 and 2028.

New Year’s Eve 2027 is the 29th day of the twelfth month, not the 30th: in the Observatory’s table that month starts on 8 January 2027 and has only 29 days. 除夕 is simply the last night of the year, whichever date that is. 破五 pòwǔ, "breaking the fifth", is the northern name for the fifth day: the taboos kept from the first to the fourth day are lifted, some businesses make it their first day back, and in the north people eat dumplings.

Is it a holiday?

• Mainland China. The State Council’s holiday rules, revised in November 2024, give the Spring Festival four days off: New Year’s Eve and the first three days of the year. In 2027 that is Friday 5 February to Monday 8 February. Each year’s actual timetable comes in a separate State Council notice, which usually lengthens the break by moving working days onto weekends: for 2026, published on 4 November 2025, it gave nine days off, 15 to 23 February, with two Saturdays worked in exchange. The notice for 2027 had not been published when this page was written, on 27 October 2026.
• Hong Kong. The 2027 general holidays are gazetted: 6, 8 and 9 February. The second day of the New Year falls on a Sunday, so the fourth day is given instead.

Goat, sheep or ram?

羊 yáng is one word for animals English names separately, and the sign has been translated all three ways. When Chinese needs to be exact it has the words: 山羊 shānyáng, "mountain 羊", is a goat, and 绵羊 miányáng is a sheep. 羊 on its own covers both, and antelopes as well. The sources do not agree on which English word to use:

English Wikipedia adds that within China there may be a regional difference, with the zodiac 羊 more often pictured as a goat in the south and a sheep in the north. Neighbouring languages chose: the Vietnamese sign is mùi, unambiguously a goat, and the Japanese hitsuji, a sheep. None of the three English words is wrong. This page says Goat because the Hong Kong Observatory does.

Fire Goat: what 丁未 means

The Chinese calendar also names each year with two characters from a cycle of sixty. 2027 is 丁未 dīngwèi, the 44th year of the cycle. 丁 dīng is the fourth of the ten Heavenly Stems, which are paired with the five elements, and it is a fire stem; 未 wèi is the eighth of the twelve Earthly Branches, the branch of the Goat. So 2027 is a Fire Goat year, and the last one was 1967, sixty years earlier. In the cycle, the Goat follows the Horse of 2026 and comes before the Monkey of 2028.

Who was born in a Year of the Goat?

A Goat year starts at Chinese New Year, not on 1 January, so someone born in January or early February belongs to the year before. These are the Goat years since 1931, with the dates from the Hong Kong Observatory’s tables:

Someone born on 20 January 1979 is therefore a Horse, not a Goat, and so is anyone born on 1 to 5 February 2027. To say what you are, use 属 shǔ, "to be born in the year of": 我属羊。 Wǒ shǔ yáng. "I was born in the Year of the Goat." For people born in a Goat year, 2027 is their 本命年 běnmìngnián, the year of their own sign.

Where the sources differ. Chinese astrology has two schools on when the animal changes: at Chinese New Year, or at 立春, the Beginning of Spring, which in 2027 falls two days earlier, on 4 February. Chinese Wikipedia sets out the split: the calendar and the zodiac sign change on New Year’s Day, while bazi fortune-telling changes at 立春. A baby born on 5 February 2027 is a Horse by the first reckoning and a Goat by the second. The table above follows the calendar. The personality said to go with each sign is folklore, and this page leaves it out.

How often do Chinese films say these words?

Here are the words of the festival as often as Mandarin film and television subtitles use them, per million words, in a simplified-character list of about 85 million words:

Three things the counts show:

• People say 过年 more than 春节. The verb "to celebrate New Year" comes up 3.0 times as often as the festival’s formal name. 新年 tops the list, but that count is every New Year, 1 January included, in a collection that is mostly translated Western film.
• 新年快乐 beats 恭喜发财. "Happy New Year" is said 6.1 times per million words, "wishing you prosperity" 0.96. The Christmas figures beside them are on Merry Christmas in Chinese.
• On screen, 羊 is more often a goat. 山羊 is said 3.0 times as often as 绵羊. That is the animals of nature films and farm scenes, not a verdict on the zodiac.

How these were counted, and what that cannot show. The list was cut into words before counting, and only what the cutting kept whole can be counted. 羊年 survived as a word, but 过年好 and 属羊 never appear: a phrase the segmenter cut into pieces cannot be counted, so their absence says nothing about how often people say them. And none of the Goat-year puns can be measured, since 喜气羊羊 and 喜气洋洋 sound the same and subtitles are written by translators, not by the people at the New Year table.

Learn the Mandarin behind the greetings

Every greeting on this page is built from words a learner meets early: 年, 快乐, 祝, 你 and 您. Verbavia teaches Mandarin from the most common words up, characters and tones included, a lesson a day, free on the web.

Lucky eight, and why 八 is linked with getting rich, is on Chinese numbers 1 to 100; the tones that make 羊 yáng different from 养 yǎng are on the Mandarin tones; and the days of the week, for writing the date on a card, are on days of the week in Chinese.

Sources

• Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Tables: 2027 ("Ding-wei, year of the Goat"; the twelfth month from 8 January; 5 February the 29th; 6 February the first day of the first month; 立春 "Spring Commences" on 4 February; 10 and 20 February the 5th and 15th days) and 2028 (25 January the last day, 26 January the first day of the next year); and the tables for 1931, 1932, 1943, 1944, 1955, 1956, 1967, 1968, 1979, 1980, 1991, 1992, 2003, 2004, 2015, 2016, 2039 and 2040 at the same address with the year changed, for the start and end of each Goat year and its stem name (Xin-wei, Gui-wei, Yi-wei, Ding-wei, Ji-wei).
• CC-CEDICT, cc-cedict.org (also served by MDBG): 羊 (sheep; goat), 羊年 ("Year of the Ram"), 未 ("8th earthly branch … year of the Sheep"), 丁 ("the 4th of the 10 Heavenly Stems"), 丁未 ("forty-fourth year … of the 60 year cycle, e.g. 1967 or 2027"), 山羊, 绵羊, 大吉, 吉祥, 祥, 快乐, 喜气洋洋, 洋洋, 洋, 祝, 您, 你们, 全家, 幸福, 身体健康, 心想事成, 万事如意, 事业有成, 生意兴隆, 新春, 新年, 新年快乐, 恭喜发财, 拜年, 红包, 压岁钱, 春节, 过年, 除夕, 大年初一, 初一, 正月, 年夜饭, 元宵节 ("on 15th of first month of the lunar calendar"), 立春, 农历, 养, 属 ("be born in the year of"), 本命年 and 生肖, with their pinyin.
• Wiktionary: 羊 (caprids; the zodiac sign "Goat, Ram, or Sheep"; an obsolete form of 祥), 祥 (glyph origin: 示 plus phonetic 羊, "originally just 羊"), 吉祥 (ancient form 吉羊), 喜氣洋洋, 拜年 (definition and the example 阿姨，我們來給您拜年了), 除夕 (the day or night before Chinese New Year), 山羊, 綿羊 and 虎 (the order of the twelve signs) and 新年快樂 (said on 1 January or at Chinese New Year).
• Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字), Han dynasty (see Shuowen Jiezi on English Wikipedia), the 羊 section, through Wikisource: 羊，祥也.
• Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (重編國語辭典修訂本), through moedict.tw: 三陽開泰 (twelve hexagrams matched to the twelve months, 泰 for the first month with three yang lines below, its use in New Year wishes, Zhang Juzheng’s 賀元旦表) and 喜氣洋洋 (the Water Margin quotation).
• Wu Cheng’en (attributed), Journey to the West (西遊記), chapter 91, Wikisource: the 功曹 spirits driving three goats while Tang Sanzang is held by demons, 泰極生否, and 設此三羊，以應開泰之言，喚做『三陽開泰』，破解你師之否塞也; English Wikipedia, Journey to the West, for its sixteenth-century date.
• Chinese Wikipedia: 三阳开泰 (the 羊/阳 and 羊/祥 homophones in folk art, three goats as a good-luck image), 羊 (羊 covers 绵羊, 山羊 and 羚羊; 大吉羊 for 大吉祥), 吉祥图案 (三羊开泰 pictured as three goats), 马六甲年景嘉年华会 (the 2015 theme), 马来西亚988电台贺岁专辑 (the 2015 album 喜气羊羊过好年), 破五節 (the fifth day, its northern name, the lifted taboos, reopening and dumplings) and 生肖纪年 (the sign changing on New Year’s Day in the calendar and at 立春 in bazi, citing Deng Wenkuan).
• English Wikipedia: Goat (zodiac)) (the Goat years and their elements, 6 February 2027 to 25 January 2028; 羊, 山羊 and 绵羊; the possible north–south difference; Vietnamese mùi and Japanese hitsuji), Sexagenary cycle (丁未, number 44, Yin Fire Goat, 2027), Heavenly Stems and Chinese zodiac (the two schools, New Year or the start of spring).
• State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 全国年节及纪念日放假办法 (Measures on National Holidays and Memorial Days), revised 10 November 2024: Article 2, the Spring Festival as four days, 农历除夕、正月初一至初三; and the State Council policy library, where the latest annual holiday notice on 27 October 2026 was 国务院办公厅关于2026年部分节假日安排的通知, dated 4 November 2025 (Spring Festival 2026: 15 to 23 February off, 14 and 28 February worked).
• Hong Kong SAR Government, General holidays for 2027: Lunar New Year’s Day on 6 February, the third and fourth days on 8 and 9 February, the fourth day replacing the second, which falls on a Sunday.
• Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J. (2016). OpenSubtitles2016: Extracting Large Parallel Corpora from Movie and TV Subtitles. Proceedings of LREC 2016. aclanthology.org
• Dave, H. FrequencyWords: frequency lists from OpenSubtitles 2018 for simplified Chinese (zh_cn), content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. github.com. The counts are computed by scripts/frequency_reference.py and scripts/frequency_yangnian.py in Verbavia’s repository and printed from their output rather than typed.