Lu Li-cheng believes that "the Chinese zodiac is a kind of memory method. The twelve animal signs represented the years just as even earlier, the points of the compass were represented by the green dragon, white tiger, rosefinch and hsuan-wu that divided up the night sky."
呂理政認為：「十二生肖是中國的一種記憶方式，就像更早的時候用青龍、白虎、朱雀、玄武來區分星空，做為東、西、南、北的代表符號一樣，十二生肖是年的代表符號。」