The fifth China-Baishan International Spring Festival will be held from August 18 through September 8 in Baishan City, northeast China's Jilin Province. Yesterday, one month before the festival, the organizing committee of the festival held a press conference in Beijing to introduce the major event.

Unique mineral water

Baishan sits in the foothills of Changbai Mountain. It is home to unique natural resources, geographical position and ecology. This helps to account for Baishan's outstanding mineral water of different kinds, good quality, and large amounts.

The water itself is spread out across large protected forests. The area receives much rain annually. From 130 different sources the area can provide 230,000 cubic meters of mineral water each day.

Frensenius, the world's leading research institution for mineral water, conducted 241 tests of 21 categories to examine the water sources, including trace element, physical chemical features, mineral composition, pesticide, etc. The results show Baishan's mineral water as natural, pure, pollution-free and of high metasilicic acid. The mineral water was found about a half century ago and is indexed in accord with European and German standards.

Baishan is listed as one of the best three mineral water reserves in the world, along with Alps in France and Northern Caucasia in Russia. It was also named an International Mineral Water City by the International Foundation for the Protection of Drinking Water.

Promising future

The Mineral water industry in Baishan has potential for development. It is estimated that the potential annual economic value will reach 100 billion yuan. In recent years Baishan has been adhering to the principles of "exploiting under protection, protecting during exploitation." It has been working hard and has achieved considerable success.

It has attracted many famous domestic enterprises such as Wahaha, Nongfu Spring, Master Kang, Wutai Group to build factories in Baishan. What's more, it has developed its own famous brand –"Quanyangquan" mineral water, with an annual production capacity of 1 million tons of mineral water.

The upcoming China-Baishan International Spring Festival is themed on "Green Olympics, Healthy Mineral Water".

(China.org.cn by Xiang Bin, July 16, 2008)