HONG KONG — Vladimir Lenin. Mao Zedong. And now: a giant reptile.

Vietnam has embalmed a turtle that many saw as a symbol of the country’s independence and longevity until its death in 2016, the state-run news media reported.

The move catapults the animal, known as Cu Rua, or Great-Grandfather Turtle, into an elite club of famous figures embalmed and put on display by Communist regimes. That list includes Lenin, Mao, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il of North Korea, and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s own revolutionary hero.

“The extremely rare giant turtle has been plastinated and lodged in a temple” at Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, the capital, where it once lived, the news site VnExpress reported on Tuesday. Plastination, a method of preserving bodies by infusing them with resins, was developed by a German anatomist in the 1970s.

In plastic as in life, Cu Rua carries immense spiritual and cultural significance in Vietnam.

A Vietnamese legend says that in the 15th century, a nationalist hero borrowed a magic sword, used it to drive out occupying Chinese forces and returned it to a turtle that surfaced in Hoan Kiem, the Lake of the Returned Sword. A turtle shrine was built on a small island in the lake in the 1880s, and the “great-grandfather” that died there in 2016 was widely thought to be the earthly embodiment of the ancient legend.