A journalist, a Hainan detour and Qiandao Lake.

Nongfu Spring — in Chinese 农夫山泉, literally “farmer’s mountain spring” — was set up on 26 September 1996 by Zhong Shanshan, and is based in Xihu District, Hangzhou. It began as a drinking-water company of Yangshengtang, the health-products business Zhong had founded in 1993, and Chinese Wikipedia still describes it as a Yangshengtang holding.

Zhong came to drinks by a roundabout route. Chinese Wikipedia, citing Chinese press profiles, says he was born in Hangzhou, left school early during the Cultural Revolution and worked as a bricklayer and carpenter, joined the rural desk of the Zhejiang Daily as a reporter in 1983, and left in 1988 for the island province of Hainan, where farming ventures did not succeed. Around 1991 he became an agent in Hainan and Guangxi for the oral-liquid tonic of Wahaha, the Hangzhou drinks company that later became his main rival in water, China.com.cn reported in 2024.

The first water came from Qiandao Lake (Thousand-Island Lake) in western Zhejiang. Chinese Wikipedia says a 4-litre Nongfu Spring went on sale in June 1997, and English Wikipedia says the first packaged drinking water was launched that year with water drawn from the lake. From the start, the classic product has been bottled water in red packaging, Chinese Wikipedia says. The company became the joint-stock Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd. in 2001.

Natural water, slogans and a Hong Kong listing.

Nongfu Spring built its brand on a distinction between “natural” and purified water. On 24 April 2000 it told the trade that it would stop making purified water and sell only natural water, Chinese Wikipedia says; English Wikipedia dates the change to 1999. Sixty-nine rival producers, including Wahaha, issued a joint statement calling its campaign unfair competition, and Nongfu Spring was fined, Chinese Wikipedia says, citing a 2024 Sina Finance report. Twenty-four years later the company reversed course: in late April 2024 it launched a purified water in a green bottle, set apart from the red natural-water pack, Yicai reported.

Its advertising lines became well known. English Wikipedia credits the slogan “a little bit sweet” (农夫山泉有点甜) with popular effect, and Chinese Wikipedia gives the later line “We don’t produce water, we are just nature’s porters.” In 2001 it ran a “one cent” campaign with Beijing’s Olympic bid committee, promising a cent to the bid for each bottle sold, with gymnast Liu Xuan and table-tennis player Kong Linghui as faces of the campaign. In 2019 it signed a two-year partnership with the swimming federation FINA for its 2020 and 2021 events, English Wikipedia says.

Behind the slogans sat a network of sources. Chinese Wikipedia lists Qiandao Lake, the Changbai Mountain mineral-water area in Jilin, where the company found a spring in 2003, the Danjiangkou Reservoir in Hubei, Wanlü Lake in Guangdong and Mount Emei in Sichuan; English Wikipedia says the company draws on ten natural water sources across China. Nielsen data, cited by English Wikipedia, made its natural water China’s most popular bottled water in 2012, and a 2024 Yicai report gave it the largest share of the mainland drinking-water market in 2023. The company filed to list in Hong Kong on 29 April 2020 and began trading on 8 September 2020, United Daily News reported.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make dairy products or drinks, and all of them come from China: Yili, Mengniu, Bright Dairy, Nongfu Spring, Wong Lo Kat, JDB and Tsingtao. Chinese dairy, water, herbal-tea and beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names with long local histories to companies that now belong to much larger groups or answer to many shareholders, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A drinks or dairy brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the everyday habit it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, added new plants or grown far beyond the city where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Juice, tea, vitamin drinks, coffee and oranges.

Water led to a wider range of drinks. English Wikipedia dates the Nongfu Orchard mixed fruit-juice drinks to 2003, the “Scream” drinks for teenagers to 2004, the Shuirong C100 vitamin C drinks to 2008, and Oriental Leaf, an unsweetened bottled tea, to 2011, followed by the “Whisked Milk Tea” range in 2012. In 2014 it moved into fresh fruit with 17.5° oranges, and in 2016 into not-from-concentrate juices under the same name and the fruit-flavoured Tea π. Its first coffee range, TanBing, followed in 2019, and Chinese Wikipedia says it began selling rice in August 2018.

The company has also widened its water range: English Wikipedia lists a natural mineral water in glass bottles, a drinking water aimed at infants and young children and a sports-cap bottle in 2015, a limited-edition bottle for the Year of the Monkey in 2016, and a 12-litre disposable barrel in 2018. Oriental Leaf’s pack drew criticism online in March 2024, and the company replied that its building image was an artistic rendering based on Chinese temple architecture, Southern Daily reported.

Abroad, English Wikipedia says the company was finalising the purchase of the Otakiri Springs source in New Zealand, and that a 2025 purchase of a commercial property in Nashua, New Hampshire, drew opposition from state politicians. The company is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is part of the Hang Seng Index; Zhong Shanshan remains its chairman, according to English Wikipedia.

For a design guide, Nongfu Spring shows how a lake, a colour and a slogan can make bottled water a brand — and how a second colour, green, can mark a change of product without unsettling the first. Compare Wahaha, its Hangzhou rival, and Master Kong, another of China’s largest drinks makers. For this guide we use a label red, a deep red, a pale lake blue and a leaf green with a calligraphic serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Nongfu Spring’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.