blog:China’s Richest Woman: From Waste to Wealth

As night falls on the town of Mayong in south China’s Guangdong Province, container trucks

emblazoned with the logo “Nine Dragons Paper”, a local household name, take to the streets.
Long after most people have gone home for the night the Nine Dragons Paper factory is still

ablaze with lights.”We run around the clock. I’ve never seen a slack period since I worked

here,” says a company manager, adding that orders had already piled up into December for the

firm’s packaging products, which are used by companies like Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, Haier and

TCL.Waste paper is the foundation of the wealth of Zhang Yin, the 49-year-old owner of the

factory and its sister plant in the eastern Jiangsu Province.The first woman to top the

Huran Report rich list in China, she has amassed an estimated fortune of 27 billion yuan

(3.4 billion U.S. dollars) by recycling scrap paper imported from the United States.And

topping the rich list has made her even richer. The share price of her company jumped 2.77

percent on the good news, adding another 1.1 billion yuan to her assets.