Illustration: Derek Zheng for Bloomberg Green
China’s Richest Person Made Billions Bottling Pristine Water
Zhong Shanshan built his Nongfu Spring empire by extracting water from some of the country’s most ecologically important rivers and mountains.
The misty, forest-carpeted Wuyi Mountains have stood almost untouched for millenniums in southern China. Ancient Taoist temples are one of the few signs of human settlement at the Unesco World Heritage Site, which is surrounded by dramatic river gorges and rainforests that are home to pangolins and clouded leopards.
On the edge of the trees, a bright yellow rectangular factory sits amid the lush greenery, like a stray Lego left behind on a lawn. Emblazoned outside is the name Nongfu Spring, China’s most recognizable bottled water brand. More than 1 million tons of fresh water pumped from Wuyi’s primeval forests arrive each year at the facility, where it’s bottled, topped with the company’s signature red caps and trucked to convenience stores and supermarkets in the region.