Divine Turtle Garden

　　The Divine Turtle Garden is situated in Taxia Wangjia Village, beneath the towering Nanping Mountain and next to the rugged Haidianxia Reservoir. It is a uniquely styled and fascinating new tourist attraction, created by Mr. Wang Dewen, a retired journalist from the Shaanxi Branch of Xinhua News Agency. Spanning an area of 5,000 square meters, the garden features a “turtle”-shaped pathway inlaid with 100,000 pieces of Taohe white stones. Around it are placed various unique Taohe rocks, including the Monkey King Stone, Moon Toad Stone, Descending Tiger Stone, Nüwa Mending the Sky Stone, Qin Emperor’s Seal Stone, and China Map Stone. At the center of a pool lies a massive stone turtle, surrounded by eight lifelike smaller stone turtles. The large turtle weighs about one ton. It has a shell, back, and carapace—the turtle’s back is 173 cm wide, 160 cm long, and 427 cm in circumference. The edges of the back are adorned with milky-white and brown wavy patterns resembling water ripples, and there are 30 similar colored rings running from head to tail. The turtle’s mouth reveals 12 pearly white teeth, giving it a vivid and lifelike expression. The exhibition hall displays poems about turtles by poets throughout history, turtle culture legends, turtle paintings, turtle artifacts, turtle fossils, and tapestries, as well as turtle embroidery, turtle stone carvings, turtle seals, turtle Tao inkstones, and other handicrafts. Also housed here are 76 comic works by Cai Zhizhong, one of Taiwan’s Top Ten Outstanding Youths and a renowned cartoonist, depicting the Eight Great Kings from the classic tale Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.