Flour turtles turn to gold turtles Because in the southern Fujianese dialect, the word for turtle is a homonym for the number nine and for the word meaning long in time, and because freshwater turtles and tortoises have five toes on their front feet and four on their back feet, adding up to nine, turtles were thought to have lived as long as the world existed.
乞龜變「金龜」由於龜的閩南語發音與「久」同音，淡水龜、陸龜腳趾又正好前五後四，相加為九，烏龜天長地久的寓意，更孕育了閩南沿海的乞龜文化。