Vietnam embalms a sacred turtle, Lenin-style

Vietnam has embalmed a turtle that many saw as a symbol of the country’s independence and longevity until its death in 2016, the state-run news media reported.


The move catapults the animal, known as Cu Rua, or Great-Grandfather Turtle, into an elite club of famous figures embalmed and put on display by Communist regimes.

That list includes Lenin, Mao, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il of North Korea, and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s own revolutionary hero. “The extremely rare giant turtle has been plastinated and lodged in a temple” at Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi , the capital, where it once lived, the news site VnExpress reported.

In plastic as in life, Cu Rua carries immense spiritual and cultural significance in Vietnam. A Vietnamese legend says that in the 15th century, a nationalist hero borrowed a magic sword, used it to drive out occupying Chinese forces and returned it to a turtle that surfaced in Hoan Kiem, the Lake of the Returned Sword.

A turtle shrine was built on a small island in the lake in the 1880s, and the “great-grandfather” that died there in 2016 was widely thought to be the earthly embodiment of the ancient legend. Cu Rua’s death prompted an outpouring of sadness. Some Vietnamese saw it as a bad omen for the country and the ruling Communist Party.


Cu Rua was believed to have died of natural causes. But Hoan Kiem Lake is notoriously polluted, and the turtle was seen surfacing for oxygen in the years before it died.

The death was also a loss for biological history because Cu Rua, who weighed an estimated 360 pounds, had been among the last of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles. Its Cu Rua’s death left just three known specimens — a couple in a zoo in Suzhou, China, and one turtle in Dong Mo Lake, outside Hanoi, whose sex has not been revealed