Turtle Fanatic Makes a Fortune Raising Turtles, Turtle Farming Leads to Wealth

On the rooftop, on the balcony, on the ground, underground, in the corners of hallways, even in his pockets - turtles are everywhere. Chen Mingqiu from Tunchang, Hainan, became obsessed with turtles and made his fortune from them. But in 2010, he encountered an unprecedented crisis, and it looked like an income of seven to eight million yuan would go down the drain. He made a decisive transformation, starting with turtles that many people looked down upon and that were worth little, and quietly found new business opportunities. Watch how Chen Mingqiu from Hainan made tens of millions in wealth from turtles.

This is the pond in Chen Mingqiu's courtyard. He says that beneath the water lettuce covering half the pond lies his fortune. Don't be fooled by the small size of the pond - some of the turtles inside are surprisingly expensive.

Chen Mingqiu: Got it, got it.

Chen Mingqiu: This one is worth 500.

Chen Mingqiu: It's big now, hard to catch. Haha.

Reporter: How much do you sell one of these turtle hatchlings for?

Chen Mingqiu: You can buy one for just over ten yuan.

Chen Mingqiu: Here, this one.

Reporter: Oh, this is a soft-shelled turtle.

Chen Mingqiu: This is not a soft-shelled turtle. Haha, red belly - what has a red belly?

Reporter: What has a red belly? It has a hard shell, so it's a turtle.

Chen Mingqiu: A hard shell means it's a turtle, and a red belly too.

Reporter: What kind of turtle has a red belly?

Chen Mingqiu: The black-necked turtle also has a red belly.

Reporter: Oh, this is a black-necked turtle? How much is a black-necked turtle hatchling like this worth now?

Chen Mingqiu: If it's from Hainan, over a hundred thousand.

Reporter: I just let over a hundred thousand slip away.

A random scoop in this turtle pond yields three kinds of turtles with such vastly different prices, but according to Chen Mingqiu, the turtles he raises are far more than just these three kinds.

This is the farm just two kilometers from Chen Mingqiu's home. Covering over one hundred mu, this farm represents all of Chen Mingqiu's painstaking effort, with well over a hundred thousand turtles and an astonishing variety of species.

Chen Mingqiu: This is just a part, just a part. Most of them haven't been brought over yet.

The turtles in these baskets number twenty or thirty species. In his entire farm, Chen Mingqiu has over one hundred different kinds of turtles.

Reporter: What kind of turtle is this, so big?

Chen Mingqiu: This is a Malayan giant turtle, scientific name giant turtle. You need to be careful - although it doesn't actively bite people, sometimes if you put your hand in, it will bite. This turtle has been raised for twenty or thirty years.

Reporter: Twenty or thirty years, and this big. How much does it weigh now?

Chen Mingqiu: Over seventy jin now. Lift it like this, it's easier to lift this way.

Reporter: I'm afraid it will bite me.

Chen Mingqiu: It can't bite you this way, if you put your hand here it can't bite.

Reporter: I can feel it resisting me. Its shell is very solid.

Chen Mingqiu: Very solid, you could even sit on it. You can try sitting on it.

Reporter: Can I? I'm afraid I'll crush it.

Chen Mingqiu: You won't crush it.

Reporter: It's very calm!

Chen Mingqiu: Very calm.

The Malayan giant turtle is a type of giant water turtle. This one isn't even the largest - the biggest can grow to over one hundred jin. In Chen Mingqiu's farm, there are also Hainan flower turtles, Hainan black-necked turtles, and Asian giant turtles, among others. But what surprised the reporter most was that Chen Mingqiu even has turtles underground.

Chen Mingqiu: This underground area is connected to the outside. These areas below are basement-level, connected to the outdoor (turtle ponds). These turtles usually like to run to these dark places. Let me show you - there are many turtles gathered down here, they all gather here to rest.

Reporter: So many turtles - what kind are they usually?

Chen Mingqiu: Golden coin turtles, golden coin turtles.

Chen Mingqiu's love for turtles can be described as almost obsessive. Any turtle he hasn't seen before, no matter the price, he must buy it. Not only does he keep them at home, sometimes he keeps them almost always within arm's reach.

Chen Mingqiu: When I go out, carrying one in my (pocket) feels like adding a stone.

Chen Mingqiu's obsession with turtles is related to an experience from his childhood. When Chen Mingqiu was young, his health wasn't very good. Later, someone gave him a turtle to eat, and combined with regular exercise, Chen Mingqiu's health gradually became very strong, so he had a strong interest in turtles from a young age. He heard that golden coin turtles have spiritual energy and are nutritious, so he began raising golden coin turtles specifically. At his peak, his golden coin turtles accounted for one third of all of Hainan Island.

Chen Mingqiu: When I first raised these turtles and brought in breeding stock, the prices were very cheap - the cheapest was ten or eight yuan per jin. Now they range from two or three hundred thousand, five or six hundred thousand, to seven or eight hundred thousand. Male turtles, purebred turtles are a bit more expensive, female turtles are a bit cheaper, over a hundred thousand each.

Reporter: Over a hundred thousand per jin?

Chen Mingqiu: Per turtle. Those used for breeding are generally sold by the turtle now.

Reporter: How many golden coin turtles are there in total now?

Chen Mingqiu: Several thousand.

Chen Mingqiu's wife Wang Nan: He gets up even in the middle of the night to check on them. Raising turtles is the most important thing to him, more important than me.

Starting in the 1990s, golden coin turtles were in high demand, and prices rose dramatically, bringing Chen Mingqiu his first pot of gold. Everyone thought Chen Mingqiu would surely focus on raising golden coin turtles, but instead, he put his focus on collecting all kinds of different turtle species. Whether they had economic value or not, he had to buy them and raise them.

Chen Mingqiu: Any I haven't seen before, I want to keep them.

This approach to turtle farming gradually gave him over one hundred species. Around 2000, Chen Mingqiu became the person raising the most turtles in Hainan. However, what he didn't expect was that his passionate love for turtles would bring him an industry crisis unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Chen Mingqiu: It got to the point where (the business) couldn't develop any further. The ones I had already raised to market size, I wanted to get rid of them and stop raising those.

Around 2010, the turtles in Chen Mingqiu's ecological farm had formed two categories. Besides rare and famous turtles like golden coin turtles, he had also bred a considerable number of food and medicinal turtles, which became an important part of his turtle wealth. These turtles were sold to the several hundred regular customers he had built up over the decades, most of them hotels and pharmaceutical factories.