Built on the side of cliffs of the Taihang Mountains, the Red Flag Canal is located at the border of Shanxi, Hebei, and Henan provinces, 50 kilometers from Anyang City. The construction of the canal was intended to take water from the Zhang River and divert it though the Taihang Mountains. It has dramatically changed the life of local people by bringing water to the region.

The area was extremely dry with unpredictable rainfall due to its geographical conditions. In the 514 years from 1436 to 1949, local people suffered from more than 100 droughts. 1650 people starved to death which is 4.3‰ of the total population in Linzhou at that time.

The Red Flag Canal was started to build in the 1960s and was completed in 10 years. It was dug entirely by hand labor and using only simple tools. The total length of the water conservancy construction is more than 1,500 kilometers long with a 70.6-kilometer-long main canal and many branches to distribute water. The accomplishment of the Red Flag Canal irrigated 36,000 hectares of land and solved water supply difficulties to some 567,000 people.[China.org.cn/Photo by Wang Zirui]