Hanshou Soft-Shelled Turtle 汉寿甲鱼
Hanshou Soft-Shelled Turtle is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
Hanshou Soft-Shelled Turtle (汉寿甲鱼) is the farmed turtle of Hanshou County (汉寿县), on the western shore of Dongting Lake (洞庭湖) in Changde (常德), Hunan. Rednet Changde describes it as the only turtle product in China to hold both a national geographical-indication product protection and an agricultural-product geographical indication.
Where it comes from
Hanshou sits where the last spurs of the Xuefeng Mountains (雪峰山) give way to the Dongting Lake plain, and the Yuan (沅水) and Li (澧水) rivers enter West Dongting here. Around Muping Lake (目平湖) some 600,000 mu (about 40,000 hectares) of reed beds form shallow wetland. The turtles grow in a web of 18 inner lakes, where rotting reed roots feed snails, mussels, small fish and shrimp, and minerals carried down by the two rivers, selenium in particular, settle on the lake bed. Rednet Changde credits this half-wild lake life with the turtle's shape: a thin, broad body and a wide, thick skirt, the soft rim around the shell.
Turtle has a long record here. Rednet Changde cites an account of Southern Song rebels under Yang Yao (杨幺), camped in the Muping Lake reed marshes, catching turtles when food ran short. Hanshou is also one of the birthplaces of turtle farming in China: in the late 1970s the academician Liu Yun (刘筠) achieved the first artificial hatching of soft-shelled turtles on the mainland here.
How it is raised
County farms follow a low-density, open-water model meant to imitate natural conditions. Turtles are raised for three to five years, males and females are kept apart, and none goes to market under 750 grams. To stop fakes, each turtle carries a chip and a code that buyers can scan to check that it is genuine. At a farm of the Huajia agricultural group (华甲农业集团), a Hunan Daily report carried by the Changde agriculture bureau described a catcher with nearly 30 years' experience landing turtles from the ponds with a special hook and line.
How it is eaten
Rednet Changde describes the meat as savoury, fragrant, firm and springy ("鲜香韧爽"). Hanshou processors also turn the turtles into ready-made dishes: the same report lists turtle soup with pigeon, turtle soup with black-bone chicken and turtle zongzi (rice dumplings), and, for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a turtle mooncake that it says has the soft texture of a traditional mooncake together with the savoury taste of turtle.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.