Thanks to decades of propaganda, almost everyone in China has heard of the Red Flag Canal, an engineering marvel built at the height of Maoist fervour by peasant farmers with only the most rudimentary of tools.
Between 1960 and 1969 more than 100,000 “volunteer” labourers tunnelled through hundreds of kilometres of mountain to divert drinking water from neighbouring Shanxi province to the parched valleys of Lin county in Northern Henan province.
Still held up by the party as a patriotic model of the communist “spirit”, the canal is now little more than a tourist attraction. The water level has dropped as the source river dwindles, much of Lin county has dried up again and upstream pollution makes the water unpotable. There are bitter disputes between Lin county farmers and those upstream who had their water taken, and who now receive compensation from the Lin county government.