---
title: "Li Dan Endorses Birch Sap: Who Is It Targeting?"
description: "From Heilongjiang, birch sap has become a viral sensation, touted as liquid gold, a hangover cure, and even an anti-cancer elixir. Despite its popularity among health-conscious consumers and the middle class, questions about its value for money, high price per bottle, and chaotic market supply suggest it faces a challenging path to surpass coconut water's $1 billion annual sales."
author: "龚正"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-06-15"
categories: "Brand Marketing"
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citation: "龚正. “Li Dan Endorses Birch Sap: Who Is It Targeting?.” New Distribution, 2025-06-15. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/li-dan-endorses-birch-sap-who-is-it-targeting-5d8e719d/"
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---

# Li Dan Endorses Birch Sap: Who Is It Targeting?

> From Heilongjiang, birch sap has become a viral sensation, touted as liquid gold, a hangover cure, and even an anti-cancer elixir. Despite its popularity among health-conscious consumers and the middle class, questions about its value for money, high price per bottle, and chaotic market supply suggest it faces a challenging path to surpass coconut water's $1 billion annual sales.

**Source** | True Story Research Office
Gong Zheng: Liquid gold, hangover cure, anti-cancer holy water... From last year to this year, birch sap from Heilongjiang has developed a viral persona, becoming a new darling of public wellness and a new label of middle-class identity consumption.
Chinese people are always at their peak when coining terms, and the underlying profit motive is to concentrate marketing budgets to explode the next super single product in the plant-based beverage sector. However, doubts about it being a "tax on stupidity," the relatively high price per bottle, and chaotic market supply mean that birch sap's journey to cross the Yangtze River, sell in Hainan, and surpass coconut water (which already sells $1 billion annually) is bound to be a challenging one.
**Birch Sap: Comparable to "Fairy Water"?**
_"A black bear crossing the road was hit by a car and left dying. A kind old man sent it to a rescue station, but the vet said there was no hope, so the old man had no choice but to return it to nature. Two weeks later, the bear miraculously recovered and came back to see the old man. Curious, the man followed the bear to find out why, and discovered the bear was licking sap flowing from a tree. The man poured some of this sap into a withered pinecone in a cup, and the pinecone slowly healed, showing signs of revival."_
This is an advertisement circulating online. It's 2025, and "advertisers" can still write such fantastical stories, with lengthy buildup only to herald the grand entrance of the final protagonist.
The protagonist is birch sap, a magical drink said to have originated in Northern Europe a thousand years ago, used for drinking, medicine, and skincare. In 1772 (during the Qianlong period of China's Qing Dynasty), it was even included in the Danish pharmacopoeia. For centuries, it has lived comfortably as the "Dongpeng Special Drink" for Nordic men and the "bird's nest" in the British Queen's bowl.
Image | Birch sap, which many find slightly sweet
The hype of a long history serves to provide "faith" for modern people. From last year to this year, birch sap has become popular on major social media. Highly suspected AI-generated advertisements bombard various streamers' live rooms and short-video bloggers' accounts.
Rubbing through the marketing copy of various capitals, the strong desire for monetization seeps through the paper, each sentence stirring people's hearts.
  * Distinguished origin: Birch sap has a long history, previously only drunk by Nordic aristocrats. In marketing, emphasizing identity is often seen as aiming to create a ritual sense of consumption class;
  * Scarcity and preciousness: Low yield—a 20-meter-tall birch tree produces only 1-1.5 kg of sap per day on average; it can only be collected for 15 days in early spring (usually mid-to-late April to early May), otherwise the sap will be used by the tree to nourish new buds. Moreover, a tree must follow a "three-year rotation" because cutting into the bark requires the tree to rest and recover. This emphasis on scarcity better creates a new identity label for the drinker.
  * Health and wellness: Contains dozens of nutrients including amino acids and minerals, known as "magical tree sap." Some marketing copy intentionally or unintentionally emphasizes scenarios like after drinking, fatigue relief, and stress relief, hinting at its health properties to stimulate consumer purchase motivation.
Although it cannot be said that these points all contradict facts, after copywriting embellishment, even cold commodities carry hot emotional value, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin—before even drinking it, one feels they have already gained benefits.
Product promotion is just basic marketing. To connect with target users, birch sap also needs celebrity endorsements. Li Dan praised birch sap as "really tasty, fell in love after one sip," and model Hu Bing praised its ingredients for "moisturizing and anti-allergy."
Don't think no one believes the legend of birch sap. Consumer Mingming saw similar "dead wood revival" ads. She is an avid live-stream shopper, and the fact that the birch sap recommended to her was a postal-channel exclusive product added a bit of trust. Additionally, she watches variety shows and seemed to have seen birch sap in host Li Xiang's fridge. Out of curiosity, she ordered two boxes.
The first box was from "Zhiyou Forest Food," 79.9 yuan for 6 bottles, each bottle (320ml) at 13.31 yuan. Mingming and her husband both felt it tasted "sweet and refreshing, not the kind of sweetness from added saccharin, and the water felt moist."
So they bought a second box from the brand "Baihua Yiran," 99 yuan for 6 bottles, each bottle (330ml) at 16.5 yuan. But they felt this brand was just average.
As for whether it works, Mingming and her husband are pragmatic: "It needs to be consumed long-term." They have also seen many online comments saying that some "food effect descriptions of birch sap are a tax on stupidity," but Mingming's husband said, "As long as it tastes good, it should be given positive value."
However, like the fate of all viral drinks, Mingming's family's enthusiasm for birch sap has passed; now they are chasing sea buckthorn juice.
**Does Birch Sap Have the Destiny of a Super Single Product?**
In the past few years, China's plant-based beverage industry has suffered from blockbuster pressure. For example, coconut water, which has been quite popular in recent years, reached $1 billion in annual sales in China in 2024, almost drinking Thai brand if coconut water (a 46-person company with annual sales of 1.1 billion) to an IPO. Meanwhile, local red bean and coix seed water has grown from a new product with a market size of only 400 million yuan a few years ago to a super small single product of nearly 2 billion yuan today.
Driven by profit, capital is always looking for the next blockbuster. In the field of health water, innovations in formulas combining traditional Chinese medicine and grains are already numerous (for example, Hema launched apple astragalus water and tangerine peel four-god water last year, and this year partnered with time-honored Chinese medicine brand Li Liangji to launch five-juice drink and summer heat-clearing vitality water). Birch sap, however, breaks the mold, emerging as another "water substitute" form closer to nature.
But does birch sap have the destiny to become the next super single product?
If we look at the industrial base, scaled stable production, widespread user awareness, and mainstream marketing channels, it may still be in its infancy.
  * **Production area and capacity are limited to one region; can it form a stable nationwide supply?**
First, look at the industrial base. Although various marketing hype is a bit excessive, for Yichun, Heilongjiang—the hometown of birch sap—it is a genuine regional specialty, underforest economy, and a vanguard for export earnings.
Yichun, Heilongjiang, located in the hinterland of the Lesser Khingan Mountains, has China's largest white birch forest, covering a full 240,000 hectares. The local area began industrializing birch sap in the 1980s. According to local government public information, there are now over 20 birch sap enterprises, with 6 on a larger scale.
Image | Birch forest in Yichun
In comparison, there are currently over 40 manufacturers of Chinese-style health water in China, and half of them have launched red bean and coix seed water, including head players like Genki Forest. The number of birch sap manufacturers is still relatively small, and there is a lack of major players in the beverage industry.
In terms of production capacity, the collection of birch sap raw materials is limited to 15 days in spring; the total national collection of birch sap is considered to be only over 10,000 tons. In contrast, China's annual red bean production capacity is nearly 700,000 tons, and coix seed nearly 100,000 tons. Even for coconut, whose production capacity is also regionally limited, China's annual coconut juice production capacity is around 1.7 million tons.
Compared with these, birch sap's production capacity is limited. If it wants to expand the market, whether it can form a stable nationwide supply is uncertain.
  * **Representative players are emerging, starting to set standards, but their scale is still insufficient:**
The growth of head players often drives the entire industry.
Among the 6 large-scale birch sap production enterprises in Yichun, a representative one belongs to Beijing Jiahua, founded by Zhang Xuegang. He was the top scorer in the regional college entrance exam, graduated from China University of Political Science and Law, and has been investing for over 20 years. Birch sap was one of his projects, but he never expected to go all in on this tree.
Although Jiahua's headquarters is in Beijing, it has built a 10,000-ton birch sap raw material production and processing base in Yichun.
According to his own account, he invested 50 million yuan over 5 years, mainly to tackle "birch sap preservation." It is said that birch sap deteriorates within 2 hours of exposure to air after being extracted from the bark. Zhang Xuegang claims to have successfully solved this problem and has also established a related industry standard called "Technical Regulations for Birch Sap Collection," which standardizes birch diameter selection, drilling height, depth, hole width, and requirements for drilling tools, filling a gap in the industry.
In addition, the company claims to have developed a "0-additive" original preservation and room-temperature concentration technology system, and has passed EU organic certification. The motivation behind these actions is that Jiahua hopes to set standards for the industry, especially for its own so-called high-quality birch sap, to control discourse (i.e., product standards) and amplify its own advantages.
Now, on the company's official website, Beijing Jiahua's products include white birch sap, concentrated white birch sap, desugared white birch sap, and white birch sap freeze-dried powder. These raw materials have been widely used in facial cleansers, toners, eye creams, day creams, night creams, and masks.
From the industry chain perspective, the company controls the entire chain from upstream raw material processing to downstream terminal products, accumulating a certain industrial base. However, limited by product singularity, to form stable company revenue, it still needs to make birch sap a hit.
But currently, from the terminal product Jiahua white birch sap, its brand awareness and consumer top-of-mind (e.g., when mentioning birch sap, people first think of this brand) are not high. Although this company has invited market research companies to conclude that Jiahua birch sap's market share exceeds 70% in tourism, annual sales in 2024 may be around 100 million yuan.
On Taobao and JD.com, Jiahua flagship store sales are around 10,000 each, with a unit price of about 15 yuan per 230ml bottle. In contrast, if coconut water's Taobao sales exceed 1 million per store, and Genki Forest's red bean and coix seed water flagship store sales are also over 100,000.
  * **The industry pattern is generally small and scattered, with some new players good at marketing-driven growth:**
Zhang Xuegang once called 2023 his company's "first year of birch sap marketing," because with the boost of short videos, birch sap saw a sales peak and product awareness broke through its niche. Other companies also began to increase marketing efforts.
For example, Linyuanchun from Baishan, Jilin Province, was originally a liquor company. Unlike Jiahua, which is fully focused on birch sap, Linyuanchun is diversified.
Under the Linyuanchun brand, there are four major series: liquor, beverages (blueberry juice, birch sap, etc.), fruit wine (ginseng wine, blueberry wine, etc.), and snacks (dried blueberries, etc.). Birch sap is just a subset.
According to the company's disclosed information, it has multiple forest farms and farmland in Northeast China, with birch sap production capacity. A bit of a coincidence, this brand also claims its birch sap market share exceeds 70%, showing that the "marketing war" has already begun.
There is also a birch sap brand called "Qingshang," affiliated with Guangdong Yetai Group, which is also diversified, with products spanning more than 10 product lines. Birch sap is just one of its "light beverage" series. The group only started making birch sap in March 2024, entering the market relatively late, likely seeing the industry's heat and shifting from "coconut" to "birch."
Compared with Jiahua, on social media, Linyuanchun and Qingshang seem to have more placements, and on relevant e-commerce platforms, both brands' sales exceed 100,000. But looking at pricing, it may be that the "price war" has stimulated the market.
On Taobao, Qingshang white birch sap, 245ml, 10 bottles for 37.5 yuan, 3.75 yuan per bottle, with the store selling over 600,000 orders, seemingly using price promotions to boost performance. Another brand, Linyuanchun white birch sap, 6 bottles for 73.6 yuan, 12.26 yuan per bottle, is considered to be within the cost range.
Currently, market statistics show that the birch sap market size exceeded 1.5 billion yuan in 2024, but this number may be inflated. From the overall industry performance:
> The category itself is still in the breakthrough stage, not yet widely known to the public;
>
> Due to yield and preservation technology constraints, the unit price of birch sap is not cheap, averaging around 10 yuan, with some expensive ones above 15 yuan, which may affect its expansion to lower-tier markets;
>
> The market still lacks well-known terminal brands, and the overall pattern is small and scattered;
**To Sell Birch Sap Well, It Needs to Shed Its Viral Persona**
Going from a viral product to a super single product has some correlation, but the essence is quite different. Viral products pursue a fad, exploding in the short term, ignoring long-term sustainable development; super single products pursue a "evergreen business," and by working backward from the goal, the two types of products should be consciously differentiated in all aspects.
To create a super single product, **the product needs to align with health trends, but also be careful not to be harmed by over-marketing.**
From coconut water to red bean and coix seed water to birch sap, objectively speaking, they all have their own nutritional elements, but they should not be exaggerated. For example, white birch sap being touted as "dead wood reviving in spring"—such deification can easily ruin the long-term development of white birch sap.
Ruan Guangfeng, deputy director of the Kexin Food and Health Information Exchange Center, said in an interview with Science and Technology Daily that white birch sap contains trace amounts of glucose, fructose, amino acids, and minerals such as iron, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, but the amounts are relatively small. For example, the sugar content of white birch sap is between 0.5% and 2%, and the amino acid content per 100ml is 0.0003g to 0.006g.
Image | Nutrition of birch sap cited by government inspection and testing departments
But thanks to trace amounts of glucose, fructose, and other components, white birch sap tastes sweeter than pure water and has a faint woody aroma.
Zhu Yi, associate professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, said: "The biggest effect of white birch sap is to replenish water; drinking water itself is beneficial to health."
From this, it can be seen that birch sap as a "water substitute" (replacement for plain water) is not a big problem, but to elevate it to the altar of "fairy water" may be overkill. It would be better to use a marketing line like Nongfu Spring's "a little sweet," which is more reasonable and clever.
**Secondly, for birch sap to become a super single product, it may also need to find an optimal solution between cost and terminal selling price.**
From health water to various bottled teas, the price range per bottle is mostly maintained between 3-7 yuan. For example, Genki Forest's red bean and coix seed water sells for 3.4 yuan for 500ml on e-commerce platforms. Even if coconut water can be sold at 5.9 yuan for a 350ml bottle, this aligns with the current consumer trend of pursuing cost-performance.
If birch sap's price per bottle remains above 10 yuan, it may attract "first-timers," but it may affect the "repurchase rate," just like Mingming's family, who after trying it will encounter more "substitutes."
To bring the price down, the industry needs capacity integration, cost reduction through scaled production, and appropriate marketing investment.
Finally, in terms of channel distribution, birch sap currently seems to rely more on e-commerce and short-video platforms for volume. These channels are characterized by high marketing costs and easily fall into a situation of "a shot of adrenaline, sales pick up, but the medicine cannot be stopped."
To increase the product's "meeting rate" with the public, it is also key to expand offline channels, especially entering large supermarket systems to increase reach, using their infrastructure to boost exposure, sales, and subsequent sales forecasting.
Overall, birch sap currently has the fate of a viral product, but it is also at a crossroads of how to transform from a viral product to a blockbuster small single product. Otherwise, it will be like fish crossing the river, replaced by the next viral water substitute.
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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 龚正
- Published: 2025-06-15
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/li-dan-endorses-birch-sap-who-is-it-targeting-5d8e719d/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Z2xhTHLqfAY4rv_fHeIkcg

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