What Chinese Astrology Says This Lunar New Year's Tiger Will Bring

As a kid, Alex Wong was always poking his older brother in the eyes, his parents, Karen Law and Randy Wong, said.

Alex Wong — a dancer who gained fame on the reality competition show “So You Think You Can Dance” and continues to entertain fans with viral TikTok videos, including a recent series teaching his parents Beyonce choreography — was born in 1986, the Year of the Tiger.

Randy Wong remembers an elderly man with knowledge of the Chinese zodiac telling him his son “will tease and play with his brother, as a cat playing around with a mouse.” Sure enough, Alex Wong’s brother was born in the Year of the Rat.

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2022’s Lunar New Year (Feb. 1) brings the Year of the Tiger, third in the 12-animal Chinese zodiac cycle. Tigers were born in 2010, 1998, 1986, 1974, 1962, 1950 and so on.

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According to superstition, a person born in a particular year takes on the traits of that year’s animal. Laura Lau, co-author of “The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes,” said people born in the Year of the Tiger tend to be powerful, rebellious, dynamic, adventurous, fiery, impulsive and unpredictable. Tigers also typically have strong ethics, so they’re very passionate about causes.

This is totally Alex, insist his Chinese Canadian immigrant parents as Alex looks at them skeptically during a recent video interview. In 2004, when Alex Wong earned the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne, becoming the first Canadian to win the prestigious international dance competition, his solo performance was called “Capture of the Tiger.”

“He’s very, very persistent,” Law said. “If he wanted to have something, oh, my God, you’re in big trouble. He would constantly say in front of your face, ‘I want this. I want this.’”

“If he sees unfairness or injustice, he would fight,” said Randy Wong. “And physically, he’s very, very capable, as you can see when he dances.”

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Alex Wong shrugged: “I mean, I agree to some degree, but, statistically, not everyone born in this year has these characteristics, you know?”

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Alex Wong says it was a coincidence that his choreographer chose the song “Capture of the Tiger” for the solo that led to Wong’s Prix de Lausanne gold medal win. But “the Tiger helped me out,” he said. © Prix de Lausanne, 2004