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Tortoise Breeding: Top Floor In Apartment Includes Area For Tortoise Breeding.
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On a first visit to Longzhou, a bowl of soup was brought to the table at lunchtime, which was a bowl of tortoise soup. We had already been talking about dog meat we had sampled in Beijing, but this was the first time that tortoise soup was one of the dishes on the menu.
The tortoise soup contained a few vegetables, was well cooked and flavoured, so was quite palatable. The cooked dog meat brought to the table in Beijing, had the same qualities as the tortoise soup. The western conception of tortoise and dogs is that of pets, and not one of a source of food to be bred and eaten. Had we not have been told the source of the meat then perhaps our appreciation of the dishes would have been better. Tortoise breeding for food was something new for us to discover during |
our travels in China, and we were surprised to find this type of breeding in the apartment where we were staying.
A friend said he had some bonsai trees growing on the rooftop of the apartment, so we went to look at them and viewed them with envy! All the bonsai trees, which had been collected from the nearby mountains, were growing in pots, a few of the bonsai trees being almost a metre in height. When we came down to the top floor of the apartment, there was a low wall enclosure in which we saw a large number of tortoise, either feeding, climbing or sleeping! Tortoise breeding was being undertaken as a source of income, but also as a source of meat for the home table! |
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*** There are many old wives tales about the age of turtles and tortoises, one of which being that the age of a tortoise can be deduced by counting the number of concentric rings on its carapace, much like the cross-section of a tree. This is not true, since the growth of a tortoise depends highly on the access of food and water. A tortoise that has access to plenty of forage (or is regularly fed by its owner) will grow faster than a Desert Tortoise that goes days without eating. Src:Wikipedia.Org ***
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